


bind and unbind

by tyrantmoves



Series: Jay Shepard [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Batarians, Dubious Consent, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Espionage, F/M, Human Trafficking, Organized Crime, Origin Story, Pre-Mass Effect 1, Renegade Commander Shepard, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Tenth Street Reds, The Batarian Hegemony, Torfan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:30:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6781756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrantmoves/pseuds/tyrantmoves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard had always known that she was better than everyone else.</p><p>The origin story of a renegade Shepard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Recruit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, [ ArtificialStupidity ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtificialStupidity/pseuds/ArtificialStupidity), for promising that if I posted this origin fic, there was at least one person who wouldn't think it was totally silly. This fic is basically finished, all four chapters, but I'll post asynchronously with fadeIn so as to not reveal too much at once. 
> 
> Also, originally, the Wolf and the Owl were stand-ins while I thought of actual names, but then I finished the story and was like, meh. I like the idea of their names being a caricature of their talents. The location is intentionally vague too -- it could be any major metropolis on Earth, from NYC to Moscow to Delhi to Nairobi to Rio.
> 
> Warning: this is the origin story of a cold, selfish, manipulative Shepard. If you're familiar with fadeIn at all ... well .... Don't expect puppies and rainbows, is all I'm saying.

Tomorrow, Jay will be twelve. She is going to celebrate by finally getting rid of Chen.

She _hates_ Chen. He’s fifteen and loud and mean but too cute to ever get in trouble by the Sisters who run the orphanage. Jay thinks of all the silly Sisters as _Pollies_ , like from her new favourite book. Stupid children being taught by stupider adults, she thinks, full of scorn. Tom Sawyer would play a clever trick on Chen and make him leave her alone.

Three weeks ago, Chen found her alone and shoved her onto the dewy grass behind the shed, pushing his hands down her pants and _really_ hurting her. She struggled under his much heavier weight but managed to push him off, scrambling to her feet. “Next time, I’m going to fuck you for real!” he’d gloated, then he bolted before the groundskeeper came around. But there’s a secret he doesn’t know.

She’s still learning to control it but she knows she has something better than a teenage boy’s strength and size. She has to hide the blue sparks from her fingers; some of the Pollies think it’s witchcraft. What a dumb idea; Jay found a book at the library about a town five-hundred years ago called _Salem_ , where they thought the same thing and burned all the witches. Don’t people _learn_ ? The extranet clearly explains her power is not _magic_.

The Alliances takes away kids who test positive for her power and Jay has just enough control to fake like she doesn’t. The only thing Alliance soldiers are good for is pick pocketing when they get drunk downtown; she doesn’t like their rowdy groups and boasting stories while they stumble, puking, down the streets. Sometimes they pay some of the kids to go back to hotel rooms with them, and the kids always come back with a fistful of credit chits and shadows in their eyes -- sometimes they come back with black eyes. Jay thinks they’re as pathetic as the soldiers that hire them.

Jay practices on the scrawny, ugly cat that Ellie likes to cuddle with. Ellie is even worse than stupid: she has a constantly dripping nose because she cries _all the time_ , over _everything_. Jay steps on the cat and while it claws at her leg, she focuses harder than she’s ever focused before and sends a big blast of energy from her hands to it’s head. There’s a snapping noise and it stops moving, neck at a weird angle. Jay’s dumbstruck until she realizes the Pollies will ask about the scratches, so she runs through the rose bushes by the fence in shorts until her whole body’s scratched up, blending the claw marks in.

Then she tells Chen that she wants to fuck him too. Tells him to hop the fence and meet her at a spot in the forever-ongoing construction of an apartment complex next to the orphanage, late at night, after the young kids and the old Pollies are in bed.

She’s purposely late, like she planned, and when she gets there he’s standing by the ledge looking at the sky. He turns when he hears her with a victorious grin on his face. “I _knew_ you’d turn out a little slut. Come here.”

Balling up the energy inside of her, pushing it to her arms, Jay hesitates, deciding if she should go through with her plan.

“Now isn’t _this_ interesting,” a cold, amused voice breaks through the silence.

Jay freezes, stops powering up. It’s the middle of the night, pitch black and the construction site is lit only by the bright moon. Only people up to no good would be here this late -- people like her, Jay thinks guiltily.

“Who’s there?” Chen whimpers and Jay rolls her eyes. Making no noises is probably the safest thing to do -- let Chen draw them out, then maybe she can run.

“What a brave young man,” a voice drawls and Jay picks up on his mocking tone. The voice -- a deep voice, an adult man -- is closer, too. Where? She can’t see more than ten feet away. There’s a _whoosh_ and a burst of blue light but before Jay can focus, there’s a hand on her arm. “Is this your girlfriend? How _cute._ ” He laughs, hard and unfriendly. “Sneaking away from your parents to do the nasty, are you? Bad children.” Jay doesn’t move an inch in the man’s grip, holding her breath.

“I’m going to fuck her,” Chen says, puffing his chest a little at this shared masculine bravado. He sounds less scared. “She let me feel her up a few weeks ago.”

The man yanks her around to look at him; a streak of moonlight illuminates stone grey eyes, his face all hard edges. “Is that true?”

“Sort of,” she says in a halting tone. “It’s what I told him.”

“But it’s not what you’re here for, is it?” How does the man know? Does she look so obvious?

“I came,” her voice shakes a bit but she steadies it, forcing herself to meet the man’s gaze. “To kill him.”

“You little --” Chen’s cut off when the man raises his hand without looking at him. Chen swallows nervously.

The man grins, wicked and predatory, eyes never leaving Jay’s face. Amused, he says, “Now that’s a whole different kind of nasty. Why would a little kid want to do something like that?”

 _Ugh_ . She’s _eleven_ ; she hates being small for her age. Her anger makes her more confident. “Because he hurts me.”

“I never --” Chen protests but the man looks up sharply.

“You keep your fucking mouth shut, kid. Let the girl talk.” Chen shuts up, clamping his mouth. Jay is pleased. The man turns back to Jay and says dryly, “He’s an annoying little shit, I’ll give you that. But you could just beat him up a little, hurt him back. Want me to do it for you?”

“No, that’s not enough! He has lots of friends and I have to stop him _forever_ so the others will know and --” she cuts herself off, realizing she’s rambling out of fear. “I can do it myself. I don’t need your help.”

“Really? How?”

“I’m stronger than him.” The man should have been confused or alarmed but instead his eyes glint with victory and his smirk widens.

Releasing her from his grip, he nods in the direction of Chen. “Well, I’d hate to interrupt.” He folds his arms and commands, “Go on, then. He’s right there and we’re all alone. What are you gonna do?”

It’s a challenge from the most impressive adult Jay has ever met. Jay has never failed to meet a challenge, even in her short years on earth so far. Balling up her power again, she turns around and blasts Chen, just barely catching the boy’s wide, terrified eyes before it hits him and he flies off the edge. A shot of fiery hot electricity rips through her brain and speeds along her brain, dizzying her temporarily.

When she turns around again, proud and sick, the man is gone except for the tingling feeling on her head, like he’d patted her there before disappearing.

\

Jay sleeps soundly that night, thinking she got away with her greatest accomplishment yet. None of the other kids will ever fuck with her again. It’s like something straight out of a book.

But then there’s banging on the door to the girl’s dormitory and the Pollies drag Jay to a tiny cupboard under the stairs, locking it shut while they sob and pray. When the police come, Jay screws up her eyes and pretends she’s Harry Potter, just like in his bedroom, and that Hagrid was coming to take her to a place for clever, talented, special people.

Now she’s sitting at the police precinct in handcuffs alone. The police officer is a fat, unkind man; he won’t speak to her while filling out paperwork.

“What are you going to do with me?” Jay finally decides to ask. The Pollies basically threw her at the police when they came, too terrified to even look at her. Someone has to speak up for Jay.

“Yes, Officer Mauli, what are you going to do with her?” It’s a flat, nasally voice that speaks from behind her. She hadn’t even heard the door open, he moved so smoothly.

“Who the --” Officer Mauli looks up, annoyed, but instantly his dark face pales. “Oh, sir -- I didn’t realize, I’m sor --”

“You needn’t worry; she’s coming with me. Problem solved.” A hand on her shoulder, bony and long. Jay looks up and sees a bespeckled, lanky man in a big white sweater even though it’s the middle of the summer. He wears huge glasses that are almost comically large for his face. But the police officer is clearly terrified and that’s enough for Jay to know this man is something.

“Sir,” Officer Mauli stammers, rearranging papers. “You can’t keep -- I mean, of course, you _can_ but kids can’t just disappear, there’s a process ... the orphanage --”

“Wants nothing to do with her.” The man’s tone is dry and unamused. “She’s a little murderer, isn’t she? Devil spawn.”

“But --”

“I must say, I do admire the pink tulips along your driveway,” the man says in a bored voice. “Your wife is so dedicated. Just imagine how brown and brittle they would be if they weren’t being watered anymore.”

If possible, the Officer goes even paler and swallows nervously. Jay is reminded intensely of Chen’s expression and she feels a little numb for the first time.

The law doesn’t say a thing while uncuffing her, hastily closing the door behind them while the man steers Jay away.

\

These last few hours have blurred together and Jay wonders how much is real or if maybe she fell off a ledge in that construction yard and died too. She is sitting on a bed in a nice room -- a big bed, a real wood dresser, a desk. It’s not glamorous but it’s the best she’s ever had. The man who rescued her from the police wouldn’t answer any of her questions and brought her here, locking the door behind him.

There’s the sound of keystrokes and the red digital lock spirals, going green.

“Didn’t I tell you that you were a bad girl?” Jay recognizes the voice before she recognizes the man; the one from last night, in the construction yard. So she _hadn’t_ been going crazy.

“Who are you?” she asks immediately, without thinking. Realizing her rashness, she recoils at her own words and bites her lower lip. “Sir?” She adds hopefully.

He’s a large man; not fat, like the police officer, but all muscle. He’s strong; much, much stronger than Jay, if she has to escape. And there was that thing he did last night ... the blue light ... was he also ...?

“We’re the Reds,” he says calmly, stepping into the room and locking it again.

She’s heard of the Reds; whispers from the adults, nervous and dark. No one likes to talk about them but everyone knows about them. “Who are _you_?” she repeats. He turns back toward her, baring his teeth in a cruel smile.

“They call me the Wolf.”

She squirms. “I want to ask another question.” He just looks at her, raising an eyebrow, so she ploughs on: “Why am I here?”

“Why do you _think_ you’re here?”

 _Because I’m worth a hundred pounds to you_? She doesn’t say that part aloud, not wanting to taunt this strange man. She tries to sound tough and says, “Because you want to fuck me. That’s always why kids disappear.”

The Wolf doesn’t laugh and he sits on the bed next to her. Instinctively she tries to back away and he grabs her arm, holding her in place. “No,” he says. “I don’t want to fuck you. I’ve seen what you do to people who want to fuck you.” There’s a rumble of condescending laughter in his voice and she’s so impressed that he managed to praise her and insult her in one stroke.

Something clicks for her, though. “You ... it was you. You called the cops.” He nods, pleased at her conclusion. “How come? I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Because the orphanage had to _want_ you gone.”

“So ... no one will come looking for me ...” her voice trembles and she feels like crying suddenly. What has she gotten herself into? What is she supposed to do now? “What do you want from me?”

“I want to teach you how to use your power, pup,” he says quietly, resting a hand gently on her head, like he did at the construction yard. “Would you like that?”

There is a very small part of her that wants to say no. Wants to see the danger in the glint in his eyes or the calculating tilt of his head. That part is too small though. So she nods, a shy smile growing on her face, too. Maybe she’s been invited to Hogwarts, after all.

\

He is the Red Wolf but everyone calls him just Wolf. Jay read that the real red wolves went extinct over a hundred years ago and it makes him seem even better: exoctic, ancient and unexpected. The other man, with nasally voice and the glasses, is called Owl. Gus, one of the Wolf’s bodyguards, tells her the Owl is smart, crazy-smart, like, genius-smart, but has a respectable life that he has to keep up to help the Wolf.

It’s been one month since that day the police gave her to the Wolf and they finally are doing the Surgery. Owl waits with her. “It will hurt after,” he says, not even looking at her as he types on his datapad. “Probably a lot. Expect nausea, headaches, vomiting and a ringing in your ears for at least a few weeks. If you start puking blood or your ear canals start bleeding, you might be dying, so let me know. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Okay,” she replies, twisting in her seat while the surgeon prepares the room. She’s nervous but excited; it feels like a test and Jay always did well on tests.

“You’re not afraid? You could die.” he asks bluntly, not even trying to talk to her like a child. She likes that about Owl, even if he is a little weird.

“I’m scared,” she admits. She’s noticed the way everyone talks in this strange compound, where everything is dark and smoky and she’s the only child. When the Wolf walks into a room, everyone hushes and looks up; it’s incredible. So she tries, “But not of dying. I’m scared I’ll ... I’ll let the Wolf down.”

Owl looks up, peering at her over his glasses. He nods. “You are a clever girl, then. Maybe he was right about you after all.”

“Why does he want me here at all?” Jay blurts out before she can stop herself. No one has explained that to her since she arrived. Sighing, Owl takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes.

“The Wolf wants more biotics he can trust. He wants ... a legacy. It’s an important part of expanding, and he likes you. Be grateful.”

“Doesn’t he have his own kids?”

Owl does not answer, instead says, “Asking direct questions is a terrible way to get answers; it’s always better to sit quietly and listen to what people say without being prompted. What people _choose_ to say is just as important as _what_ their words are, if you want to understand them.”

She keeps repeating this lesson in her head again and again, even on the operation table, until the gas knocks her out.

\

She’s thirteen now and bursting with admiration for the Wolf but knows better than to show it. He would give her a sharp lecture and a smack if he saw her so easily express her devotion to anyone, even him.

She doesn’t go to school anymore but is learning more interesting things anyways by tagging along with his trusted men as they work the streets. Things like: how much a kilogram of red sand sells for; how to know when someone is lying to you; where to stash cocaine so that the police dogs can’t sniff it out. A few times, even, how to shoot a gun -- the kickback was such a thrill that Jay couldn’t keep the grin off her face the first time. They make a funny sight, big burly thugs and a scrawny preteen, but no one is stupid enough to say anything.

The Wolf can’t show her these things himself because he has an empire of escapism to run. But he told her she has to understand these things so that someday, when she’s allowed in the throne room, she knows how it all works. He tells her, “I don’t like being disappointed, pup. Learn everything you can.” Sometimes he quizzes her when they get a chance to eat together. Right answers get an approving smile; wrong answers, a biotic slap. Thankfully, the Wolf was right; she is a very clever girl and she keeps the slaps to a minimum.

Her favourite lessons are the biotics with him, though. He is _amazing_. The Wolf makes biotic blasts of energy look so effortless that Jay is ashamed to even try to strike back when he throws her across the mat. But she knows that whatever pain comes, it’ll be worse if she gives up. Better to keep fighting until he’s decided she’s had enough than to complain (she’s learned the hard way, clutching a broken arm in her room for days before Wolf would let Owl set it properly).

Owl makes her understand the more complicated things: the chemical properties of the clean drugs over a tainted batch, the tax evasion book-keeping of a laundering front, the logistics of a cargo pick-up. He doesn’t even try to simplify things; if she can’t keep up, he says he’ll tell the Wolf she’s been slacking. That always gets her attention when her eyes start to glaze over.

She’s afraid of getting hurt by the Wolf but she’s more afraid of disappointing him. She hears whispers from some of the grunts: “can’t believe boss chose this girl” and “too damn bad about that boy” or “thought that other girl had real spunk”. Jay understands she’s not the first attempt at a protégé but she’s determined to be the last.

\

It’s pitch black outside and she’s fourteen, waiting for their supplier to make the drop. They’re on an old dock that hasn’t been used in years, where the power grid doesn’t bother lighting up anymore to conserve energy. The wood is rotting and the cargo boxes empty and untouched. Jay resists the urge to tap her foot impatiently, conscious of not wanting to look childish: the Wolf is here this time.

The Wolf folds his arms and drawls quietly, “They’re late; I don’t have time for amateurs.”

Jay thinks she sees something move behind a cargo box and starts. The Wolf sees her tense and shoots his eye to where she’s looking. A few of the men notice too. She makes eye contact with Josef, the most sure-footed, and jerks her head for him to go investigate. Josef’s eyes flicker to the Wolf, who nods approvingly, and Josef moves like a panther, disappearing into the shadows.

There’s a strangled cry and everyone pulls out their guns, creating a protective circle around the Wolf and Jay. Without having to be told, she’s powering up, feeling the rush of blue energy sparking into her fingertips.

Josef’s dismembered head rolls across the dock, landing at the Wolf’s feet, bloody with a haphazardly cut neck.

The Wolf doesn’t even flinch, staring coldly down at the dismembered head but Jay takes a few steps back, nauseas. She had liked that asshole. He was funny and taught her how to play (and cheat at) poker. _They’ve been set up_ , she realizes angrily. Someone stupid enough to try and double-cross the Wolf. Anger and fear mix together in a toxic combination and without thinking, she blasts forward, towards Josef’s killer. She’s careless though and a hand closes around her forearm, hurling her at the ground face-first.

A gun being cocked, even over the noise of the Wolf’s group scuffling with this rival group: she hears it loud and clear. A barrel against her skull --

\-- and the person is knocked backwards with a blue blast. Jay jumps to her feet and sees it was the Wolf who’d saved her, charging her assailant down. The Wolf looks up to meet her gaze, concern touching his eyes briefly before it melts to fury. When it’s over, the Wolf makes them dump their bodies into the salty water; all of the enemy and even the handful of their guys that dropped, too.

Later, at the compound, the Wolf tells Jay to sniff out the mole and deliver them to him. It takes her three weeks, a lot of lying and a lot of sitting quietly _listening_ without asking questions but she finds him. The Wolf invites the mole and Jay to dinner: then he shoots the mole, calmly pulling a gun out over dessert. She screamed and looked away while being sprayed with the mole’s innards; she’s seen many people killed by now but it’s just so _wrong_ , over dinner, a shattered piece of skull in her pie like ivory when a second ago she was smiling at a joke.

This infuriates the Wolf; she should _not_ have screamed, she shouldn’t have, she knows better -- that’s what she reminds herself when he strikes her hard across the face with his hands, no biotics, so hard she topples. Crouching down, he helps her back into her chair and wipes away the brain tissue and blood off her face with a napkin, soothing, “Betrayal is a disease, pup. If you let one infected member into your team it spreads, and then you have a mutiny. Think of this as a vaccine.”

He gets her a new piece of pie but makes her stay and finish her meal while the body of the mole already starts smelling rancid. Jay waits till she can sneak outside, where she knows there’s a blind spot in security, before she lets herself throw up, feeling so ashamed for failing the Wolf.

\

“You don’t really need Owl,” Jay says one day, looking up from her book. She’s been reading a real, physical copy of _Julius Caesar_ that the Wolf bought her for her fifteenth birthday. Paper books, with beautiful leather covers and musty smelling sheets, are a luxury. “Why even keep him around?”

“Why do you think I keep him around?” he indulges, looking up from his datapad. Tagging his coffee, he asks, “What would you suggest I do with him?”

“He’s...” Jay struggles to be honest, and then goes for it, “He’s not as strong as you, but he’s smart enough to be a threat. Aren’t you ever worried he’ll try to undermine you, pull a Brutus?”

“Go on,” he insists.

“We don’t hurt people, we end people. That’s what you told me. So why don’t you just end Owl? I’m worried some day he’ll get sick of being second place and try to hurt us.”

“It’s true,” he agrees again, and Jay is getting suspicious at all this nodding. “But then who would be our second in command?”

“Gus,” she says. “Or Harjit, or Lucia ... they’re more loyal and kind of dumb. You wouldn’t have to worry.”

“Owl could be dangerous, you’re right,” the Wolf starts. “And that’s exactly why we have to keep him closer than all the others. Letting him be our most important councillor makes him feel special, privileged. It also means we can keep an eye on him and encourage him to use his smarts ... more productively, for our benefit.” Jay thinks for a moment.

“So ... an owl in a cage is better than a dead owl?” Jay confirms, understanding now.

The Wolf grins. “Just more useful, pup. Not better.”

\

She’s sixteen, and gotten so good at Earthside jobs that the Wolf has sent her up _there_ . Into _space._ They have a ship -- it’s not a nice ship, it’s old and boring like a routine freighter, but it has to be to not attract attention -- and Jay _loves it_ . They’re mostly in the local cluster, running trips to resources on Titan and colonies on Mars. She insists on naming it the _Nautilus_ , certain of the adventures she’ll have, thinking she’ll write her own book and call it Twenty Thousand Light Years Among the Stars. She’s almost embarrassed at how happy it makes her.

\

The Wolf has been giving her more and more high-risk jobs as he tries to expand galactically. She takes this with great pride; he thinks she can handle it. At first, anyways. There was that negotiation with salarian black market chemists, pitching a new drug, that almost went badly because salarians were so damn quick with their tongues. It took all of her brain power to keep up and not get outwitted and ripped off; she’s still sure they paid too much. There was the checking-in on shell companies with the asari investors; they had records of their phantom transactions that went on for _centuries_. Jay had to take stims just to stay awake for the whole conversation.

And now there are the quarian arms-traders. They’d secured a number of light firearms and want to sell them to the Reds. Jay thinks this is a stupid idea; firearms are riskier because the Alliance would get involved if they got caught, and the Alliance was much more dangerous than the Allied Earth Law Enforcement. The AELE couldn’t even get everyone to wear the same uniform, let alone track intergalactic human criminals.

They’re on the _Nautilus_ at the rendezvous, waiting, and Jay is more nervous than she’s been in a long time. The quarians are late. Why had the Wolf taken such a risk? Their position is exposed, they’re in range of the route that Alliance patrols take ... anything could happen. She wants to lash out at the crew to relieve some of her anger but the Wolf’s voice is calming and commanding in her head. _If they know you’re cracking, they’ll start to crack too, or they’ll try to crack you open. Uncertainty is weakness._

She spent the last few hours sparring with some of the guys on the upper deck. She’s sweaty and bruised but feels a bit better. The quarians arrive, finally. But when the shuttle opens, out pours Alliance soldiers, and Jay sees cuffed quarians still sitting in the shuttle through the open door.

“Everyone, hands on your heads! Weapons where we can see them!” one of them shouts. There’s too many of them, and another shuttle lands with more soldiers. Jay freezes: what does she do? What does she say? Her First Mate, Harjit, looks at her quickly before dropping his assault rifle and putting his hands on his turban. He won’t sell her out. None of the others will too, she thinks, casting a quick gaze on them. She’s grateful that she didn’t bother with a weapon because her biotics have gotten powerful enough to not need one.

“You’re under arrest for the possession and sale of illegal arms! You will be transfer to the Allied Earth Law Enforcement upon reaching Earth! You will have the right to contact a lawyer at that time!”

The Alliance soldiers line them up against the wall, cuffing them. A soldier stops when he gets to her and turns her around to look at him. _This looks very bad_ , she realizes. She’s a sweaty, bruised teenage girl in baggy clothing that hides her muscle, making her look scrawny and small on a ship full of very unsavoury adult men. She might have a chance. She drops her gaze quickly, trying to look meek and frightened.

“Sergeant, we’ve got a minor over here,” he calls out. He takes her by the arm and she pretends to flinch away, nervous from his touch. “Hey, I’m not going to hurt you, kid.”

He marches her to face an older woman, who studies Jay’s bruises gravely. The sergeant curses under her breath and says into her omni-tool, “Sir, we need you to come here. I think they were keeping a kid here like a toy or something. She’s in rough shape.” Angrily, she shouts at the men lining the wall, “Don’t you have _any_ decency at all? For fuck’s sake, fucking animals.” The cuffed men look over nervously, not stupid enough to say anything to betray the Wolf’s pup. Jay resists smiling. If they get out of this, she’ll tell the Wolf about their loyalty and they’ll be rewarded.

A dark-skinned man appears in a crisp uniform; an officer, obviously. There are gleaming medals and an N7 insignia on his chest. The other soldiers salute him and he insists they be at ease. He gives her a long calculating look.

“I’m Major David Anderson. I want to help you,” he says, offering his hand. She pulls away, still playing the part of a terrorized damsel, spurning men’s touch. “Okay,” he holds his hands up in surrender. “It’s okay. We can just talk. What’s your name?”

“J-Jay. Major. Sir. Major-sir.”

“Don’t worry about that. Like the letter? What does it stand for?”

“Nothing, sir. Just Jay.”

“What about a last name?”

“I ... I’ve never had one,” she rubs an arm nervously. His eyes narrow and Jay feels a lurch in her stomach; he’s not buying it. Which is almost funny because this time, Jay is actually telling the truth. She’s never had a last name.

“How old are you?”

“I’m not sure. I think ... fifteen. Or maybe sixteen.”

“Why are you on this ship, Jay? It’s a bad situation. There’s been an increase in illegal firearms on colonies and it’s leading to a lot of dead soldiers. I don’t like dead soldiers. Would you know anything about that, Jay?” There’s something in the way he talks that reminds her of Wolf. Commanding, reasonable but also ... daring. He’s daring her to lie.

“No -- no, sir. They just keep me here to clean the ship and sometimes they --” she stops. Looks away in shame.

“-- and?” he demands she continue, unruffled. _Shit_. This was usually the part where she’d get a simper of compassion or the need to be a hero would kick in

“-- they make me, they make me _do_ things that ... I ...”

The sergeant cuts in, “Sir, in all due respect, she’s traumatized. Is this really necessary?”

“And how are you sure of that, Sergeant Petrovy?”

“First off, she’s the only one unarmed, and she’s a tiny thing. Look at the way the men are looking at her. They keep eyeing her like she’s their dirty little secret. Guilty and anxious. It’s one thing to go to jail as an arms-dealer, another for being a bunch of gang-raping pedophiles.”

Anderson looks at the men, and then he looks back at Jay. He stares for a long time. A sinking feeling in her stomach. _He sees it_. He doesn’t see guilt; he sees the men’s fear. He knows. She’s sure he’s going to say it out loud, he’s going to arrest her, this is a disaster ...

“Okay, I see your point,” Anderson blatantly lies. Jay is stunned. “Good observations, Sergeant. Move out. I’ll handle Miss Jay from here.” Sergeant Petrovy nods, salutes and leaves them alone. “What do you like to do, Jay?” Anderson asks suddenly.

“Sir?” Jay is genuinely confused and almost drops her ruse of a weak little girl.

“Music? Movies? Do you have hobbies, Jay?”

“Uh ... books, sir. I like to read.” She doesn’t even know why she answered honestly; no harm, she supposes.

“What kind of books?”

“The classics, sir. Anything at least a hundred and fifty years old.”

This makes him laugh appreciatively. Anderson moves so that he’s standing in front of Jay,  blocking from the men’s view, and subtly lifts his omnitool to hers. She sees someone’s contact information flash on her tool, downloaded. “Now,” he says carefully. “You’ll have to come with us back to the main space station, but we can get you back to Earth after. I think you’ve endured enough.”

On the passenger ship back to Earth, she gets a ping from someone called “Smiley”. There’s no message, only an audiobook attachment. With nothing else to do, she listens, finishes it over the whole twelve hour trip.

Miraculously, she’s back in her room after debriefing the Wolf. He’s furious but she doesn’t understand why at _her_. The whole thing was his idea, she had warned him about the likeliness of getting caught. She lies still on her bed, any movement flaring the injuries she was dealt as consequences for getting caught. Then her omni-tool pings and worrying that it’s the Wolf, that he’s not done with her yet, she exerts immense effort into lifting her arm and reads the message.

“Smiley” wrote: _I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't._

Jay doesn’t reply; she doesn’t know what to say. Why did he let her go? What does he want from her? He’s -- why is he quoting that book he gave her? Then he sends another message: _If you’ve ever had enough, a bellyful, in fact, you know how to find me, kid._

She gets up with a groan, rereading the messages, trying to understand. Was he offering ...? Before Jay can process this message, the Wolf comes into her room, carrying two open beer bottles.

“You can make this up to me,” the Wolf tells her, sitting on the edge of her bed and she resists the urge to cringe away. He hands her one of the open bottles; a peace offering. “You’re going to Torfan.”

Jay has a bad feeling about this, Torfan is far and in dangerous space, but she accepts the drink. The Wolf smooths her hair with one hand, bringing his bottle to chink against hers, and the disquiet in her is quelled. She’s been forgiven; an immense relief. The cryptic messages from the N7 officer are chased away, and she forgets about him by the time the bottle is at her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:  
> “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, Twain.  
> “Oliver Twist”, Dickens. “"When the boy's worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me ...”  
> “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, Rowling.  
> “Julius Caesar”, Shakespeare. “Brutus” being the betrayer.  
> “Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, Verne. “The Nautilus” is the name of the submarine.  
> “Tinker Soldier Sailor Spy”, le Carré. “I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't."


	2. The Dissident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty nervous about posting this chapter; it's very OC heavy and very much head canon about batarians. 
> 
> I feel like batarians don't get nearly enough compassion or development; I hope I did them justice!

She hates going to Torfan more than any of her other runs.

The first few times she goes, Jay doesn’t even look at the cargo. She just meets with the batarian leaders in the base and they talk prices, quantity, frequency of delivery...

... age. Health status. Appearance; some of the batarians have fetishes for certain kinds of humans, they fetch better prices at the auctions. Jay tries to remain calm, cool and channel as much of Wolf’s predatory confidence as possible. But that doesn’t change the fact that these batarians look at  _ her  _ the same way they look at  _ them _ . Weak little humans, moved around like cattle. 

Most of Torfan is paramilitary. But there are the slave auction squares by the landing docks. Hundreds of them, where ships come in and bid, pick up their miserable cargo, and disappear. She wanders around the compound, memorizing the labyrinth of underground tunnels, forcing herself to become desensitized. Every whip crack, every electroshock, every scream and sob and bouts of begging, Jay absorbs, analyzes, tucks away into her head and tells herself these are signs of weakness. They are inferior and deserve this; she tells herself this again and again, imagining the Wolf standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders, refusing to let her look away.

“Look here!” a batarian guard seizes her wrist and she whips around but another one has grabbed her other arm. “A runner!” 

Quickly, three others are upon her, dragging her while she shouts, “ _ No _ ! I’m a  _ trader _ , I’m not a  _ slave _ , you fucking idiots!” They drag her to the side of the road, push her down to the ground roughly with a hard backhand that winds her.

There’s a  _ bang _ and a clean shot to the shoulder knocks one of the batarians down and the others look up. Jay looks too, breathing hard, thinking about how stupid she was to roam without a guard of her own nearby. It looks like her saviour was another batarian with reddish-brown skin instead of the usual green. “She’s with the Red Wolf: let her go,” he commands. Compared to the others, his voice isn’t as deep. Younger, Jay thinks. Whoever he is, young or not, he has some authority and the other men get off of her. 

When the Torfan command hears what happens, they fall over themselves apologizing, eager to not damage their business relationship with the Red Wolf and their slave supply line. They would never slave her, of course not, she was one of the respectable humans, the good ones, she was special ... their excuses are as brittle and endless as autumn leaves on Earth. They assign her rescuer to Jay: having a batarian guard around at all times will make sure the mistake doesn’t happen again. 

He is Ekhanin Ghaf’fess, a  _ progak _ : Ekhanin explains stiffly to her over dinner later that this is the name of his middle class merchant caste. Under Hegemony law, as the fourth son, he has no birth right to property so his father set him up here, on Torfan, as a freelance mercenary. The men who attacked her were  _ bkhanak _ , a lower class. Jay surmises that castes matter just as much, if not more, than pseudo-military ranks or age among batarian mercenaries.

At the dining hall in the main base, Jay sits sipping blood-coloured wine and surveying the room of mercenaries, slavers, traffickers and their illustrious guests with clinical interest. Batarians and Torfan unsettle her but she doesn’t know enough about this strange alien species to make any decisions. She will wait and learn more, with a new source of information guarding her nearby.

\

When Ekhanin thinks she isn’t looking, his four-eyed gaze rakes her body, savouring. She tells the Wolf about Ekhanin and his not-so-secret lust. He suggests Jay indulge Ekhanin’s interest, learn as much as she can about their new business associates. She’s had sex before, but, with an alien? “There are only two kinds of lifeforms in this galaxy, pup,” he says. “Those who use and those who get used. Who’d you rather be?” 

The Owl tells her, “Human and batarian sexual anatomies are surprisingly compatible. Why do you think humans are such popular slaves among their kind?” Not exactly the sexiest thing Jay has ever heard before seducing someone but good to know, she supposes.

So she fucks Ekhanin; unsurprisingly, it’s not hard to persuade a teenage boy and he eagerly jumps into her bed. What does surprise her is that he doesn’t know his way around her body very well, although seems determined to learn everything he can. Jay had figured that like the other mercenaries, he’d ... entertained himself using the slaves he was meant to guard.

Sex with a batarian is weird but she does a passable job at pretending it’s not. The worst is when he wants to go down on her and Jay has to focus on the ceiling because otherwise she’ll see those four pupil-less eyes staring back at her, blinking only half as much as human eyes, while his too-red tongue darts around her folds. By pretending it’s someone else, she can get wet enough that he can enter her, thrusting until he collapses beside her to catch his breath for a few moments before leaving. 

Jay doesn’t mind; that’s the only kind of sex the Wolf says is worthwhile, anyways. She smokes alone in her room after, still lying naked and sore in bed, plotting. What can she do with this this new asset?

\

Maybe she’s a trader but the batarians still look at her with a condescending gaze, sizing her up like a prize show dog at a fair, not as an equal. The only reason they don’t hurt her is because she’s a means to the Wolf, and the Wolf’s Reds are a profitable relationship. Always the pup, she thinks, with a new bitterness. If they’re going to use her, she’d rather they used her for her, not because she was a means to someone  _ else _ . The Wolf’s never even  _ been  _ to Torfan or anywhere off Earth but everyone talks about him all the time. She does all the real work, anyways.

\

A slave girl is refilling her cup at dinner and drops the bottle. Wine seeps over the table edge, onto Jay’s pants. The batarians all stare at her, waiting for her reaction, waiting to see if she is not also, in the end, a submissive slave. So Jay slaps the girl across the face with a biotic blast. The girl doesn’t even cry out as she stumbles, her vacant eyes and the bruised skin under her collar indicating a lifetime of violence.

“A traitor to your own kind,” General Bas’khar drawls in a deep rumble from beside her. He’s older, maybe middle-aged, and popular with his men for reasons Jay can’t fathom. “She’s one of your own and yet you don’t even flinch at abusing her. Do you not feel shame?” His tone is derisive, intended to humiliate her and put her on the spot. Bas’khar does this a lot; she doesn’t like how much attention he pays to her all together. She’s already spent the night trying to subtly push his hands off her thigh and she does not have the patience for his jeers.

“Shame?” Jay replies, reaching deep into her head, finding the compartments of ice she stores for these moments. “These pathetic excuses for humans are the only shame here.” Fixing her gaze back on the slave girl, her hands trembling but her voice steady, she announces, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing humanity a fucking favour, purging us of dead weight.”  A few of the other batarians at the head table laugh appreciatively and the treacherous moment passes.

Jay is gripping her pants so tightly under the table she thinks she might tear them. Ekhanin seems just as tense and Jay doesn’t care why.

Back in her guest room, she’s lying on her bed, gritting her teeth. Ekhanin knocks twice and she doesn’t answer, hoping he’ll think she’s asleep already. She can’t get those vacant eyes out of her head and she just knows she won’t be able to get turned on enough to fake her way through it tonight. But he opens the door anyways and comes towards her bed. A good slaver would not be bothered by what happened, she reminds herself, bracing herself for what will be particularly unpleasant sex. 

She swings her legs off the bed and pulls him closer by his pant loops, pushing up his shirt to kiss the leathery texture of his flat abdominals. She’s surprised when he pushes her away, cupping her face, and while frowning says, “I figured you wouldn’t be in the mood, after what happened.” 

She doesn’t know what to say. It has never occurred to her that he actually cared if she was equally enthusiastic.  _ He’ll leave _ , she thinks. He’ll leave and she can just be blissfully alone with her thoughts. But he kisses her forehead and steps away from her, stripping down.

He puts one arm under her knees and half-lifts her back onto the bed, crawling in with her to slip under the sheets. She rolls away, facing the wall instead of him, confused. He snakes one arm under her and one arm around her waist, bringing her into a close embrace. Like all batarians, his breathing is loud, wind moving through the strange fleshy piping on his head and through his slotted nose.

He whispers, “You were good out there.” 

“Glad you enjoyed the show,” she mutters, angry and unsure why, making her angrier. 

He lifts himself up a bit so he can lean over her but she doesn’t crane her neck to meet his alien gaze. Dropping back down, he settles for pressing a long kiss onto her shoulder. “I didn’t.”

“Guess not, huh? That was nothing compared to what you do to slaves all day.” She needs to get this under control; it’s poisoning her words without her permission.

“I don’t like putting on my shows, either, Jay.” He’s never said her name before. He snuggles in closer; a kiss on her neck this time. “I know you didn’t like it but you did what you had to do today. You know that it was the smart thing to do.”

Not even aware of how tense she’s been, she sags a bit with relief. Hesitantly she rests an arm over his so their fingers lace together; she falls asleep to the whirling of his breathing, soothing like the strange comfort of a storm against her windows.

\

Once, while touring through the elaborate underground tunnels, memorizing a new short cut, she and Ekhanin stumble onto the slave holding cells. The stench hits her nose before her eyes register where she is: the smell of shit, sweat, vomit and  _ fear _ hang like smog in the air. 

Too many slaves -- mostly human, but there are some asari and salarians and quarians too (Jay heard a rumour once that turians committed suicide before allowing themselves to become slaves) -- crammed into too little space, some of the cells with not even enough room to lie down. Jay feels Ekhanin freeze next to her and he squeezes her hand quickly, before the batarian guards turn and notice them. They recognize Jay, the slave-trading girl, and Jay keeps her eyes averted from the holding cells. They say nothing to her and Ekhanin, only nod in greeting.

There’s a sharp crack and Jay turns her gaze slowly to the noise, adrenaline pumping. She knows what it is before she even finds it; in a dark corner, there’s a woman with her hands strung above her head, being whipped. She shrieks and sobs each time the crack comes down, trembling.

Jay notices one thing though. The woman is not begging for them to stop; she’s saying something else. Something compels her to investigate further and she feels Ekhanin’s hesitation beside her but he follows dutifully. 

“ _ Please _ ,” the woman sobs. More quietly, so only Jay and Ekhanin can hear while they pass her, she says, “I can’t raise her like this. Don’t make me. Please.”

Ekhanin and Jay look at each other, realizing what she means; the woman is pregnant. There is a small swell of baby in her belly -- she’s naked waist up and Jay is surprised the guards didn’t notice. Slaves born into captivity sell much better than those captured; they don’t try to run away or kill themselves, grateful and loyal to their owners. The cold business of that logic, in that moment, kills Jay, undoing all her work to desensitize. She has spent her  _ whole life  _ finding purpose in rebellion and these captive-born slaves have only one purpose; to submit.

If Jay is wounded, Ekhanin is  _ crushed _ . He looks away completely, his entire body language indicating he would rather be anywhere else. One of the guards notices and with a cold sneer, says, “Look at that, the high-born can’t stomach the work, after all.”

Ekhanin tenses. “What did she do?”

They don’t answer -- probably because there is no answer, Jay realizes, annoyed. Even when the Wolf punishes her, there’s a  _ point _ , a lesson to be learned. She knows that he does it for her  _ benefit,  _ not his amusement. 

“You know what I think,” one of the guards says to the other. There is a callous, bubbling anger to them, sewn in from decades of emotionally-numbing work under a brutal regime. “I think he doesn’t like slaves.”

Jay scoffs, trying to distract the guards attention onto her. “Who does? They’re disgusting.”

“That’s not what I mean, human,” the guard replies. “There’s traitors who don’t respect our culture;  _ batarians _ who don’t like slavery. Did you know that? Nothing worse than your own people trying to destroy your ways.”

Jay musters her coldest smile. “Like a human who doesn’t approve of instantly ravaging a new system for resources?” The guards laugh and Jay thinks the moment has passed, they can leave --

“Here,” the guard says, tossing the whip at Ekhanin. “Get some practice, high born. We can take a picture for you to show all your  _ progek  _ friends.”

Jay takes one look at Ekhanin’s face and snatches the whip from him. “Where are your manners?” she goads. “I’m the honoured guest here. This one’s mine.”

“ _ Please _ ,” the woman gasps again, and Jay makes up her mind, feeling the batarians guards eyes on her. She cracks the whip as hard as she can, subtly adding a biotic twist to it, on the woman’s neck. With a snap, the woman stops moving, stops making a sound.

“Fuck,” Jay manages, voice shaking genuinely but not for the reasons the batarian guards will know. She hands the whip back to the guard. “I’ll pay for the damages. I’m clearly out of practice.”

“Come by anytime,” one of the guards offers un-enthusiastically. “We could use the practice too.” She doesn’t call them out on their hinted threat. She’s too busy dragging a very stiff Ekhanin from the room.

The one good thing about Torfan is that it’s almost medieval in its security; in a way, that is Torfan’s great advantage, that there are no advanced computer systems and security cameras to hack and mislead for attacking troops. It requires an old-fashioned tracker’s instinct and sense of warfare to take this place on.

It also means no one sees them when Ekhanin and Jay find a quiet, isolated hallway in the labyrinth. Ekhanin presses his lips every where he can on her face, the quiet  _ thank-you  _ of his kisses showering her, calming her. It doesn’t feel strange at all anymore, the flat ridge where a nose should be and the fine hairs around his mouth. 

\

“It’s only the wealthiest families that benefit from slavery,” Ekhanin tells her in the private hot spring they found, exploring far away from the main settlement of the base, from the stench of enslavement. He is massaging an oil that almost smells like cedar into her hair while she sits between his legs, both wonderfully naked in the steamy water.

“Mmm,” she agrees absently, enjoying the feeling of strong fingers on her scalp. “Most of the mercs and foreman are lower caste, though.” She’s been reading anything she can get her hands on about batarians these days.

“The only reason the  _ kriesh _ \--” the oppressed, Jay mentally translates -- “like slavery is because it means there’s someone lower on the rung than them.” He drops his hands to rub her neck and shoulders now. “It’s a way to manipulate lower class batarians, that’s what it’s about.” 

“Sure,” Jay agrees, craning her neck to give him better access. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

“Exactly. The  _ vrinesh”  _ \-- the elite, the oppressor -- “invented an economic system to keep wages minimal for low class batarians by exploiting free labour, freezing class mobility and giving them an excuse to cut us off from the galaxy so no one is exposed to ideas that might threaten the existing power establishment!” He’s getting angry, rough with his fingers and Jay arches away. “Fuck, sorry,” he breathes, pulling her back, trailing apologetic kisses where he’d dug in deep.

She turns around and catches his lips in a reassuring kiss. “I sell slaves,” she says, albeit a touch bitterly without realizing it. “Doesn’t that make me a part of the problem?”

“It does,” he concedes. It should bother her, that he’s judging her, but there’s something refreshing about his indiscriminate application of justice. Maybe she can’t always agree with his views but he’s consistent in his ruthless application of logic; to this she can relate. “But you do what you do as a criminal, an aberration to your society. The entire batarian system is based off slavery. It’s different; I’m not talking about ending slavery because it’s a nice thing to do. I’m talking about  _ fundamentally  _ challenging the dominant power paradigm. Ripping it up and throwing it away.”

“That sounds like chaos.”

“Maybe chaos is the only true freedom.”

“Okay, as much as I love debating socioeconomic politics,” she says silkily, looking into his upper eyes, then his lower ones. Had she really ever thought them weird or ugly? While bringing his hands to cup her breasts she continues, “I’m ready for a xeno-biology lesson now.” He eagerly obliges.

\

“You and that batarian boy seem close.”

“Wasn’t that the point?”

Jay is annoyed; the Wolf had sent her to Berkenstein to meet with the leader of a rival asari drug cartel. Of course it was a trap; of course it was just an opportunity for them to strike a blow at the Reds. How could the Wolf  _ not  _ have seen this coming?

Jasmine, Jay’s new First Mate, and her make quick work of the Eclipse mercenaries that the drug queen hired before turning their guns on her. After, Jay and Jasmine drag the bodies out into the open overnight, so that in the morning, everyone knows what happens to double crossers.

She doesn’t know why the Wolf keeps sending her on these insanely half-baked, poorly thought out meetings. The honour and privilege of it has lots its glimmer and shine, leaving rusted trust in her mouth. He keeps making her do these dangerous jobs and she keeps almost getting caught, just nipping out of harm’s way in time. He has no idea what it’s like out here in space, sitting in his lavishly comfortable compound back on Earth. 

\

“Destroy it when you’re done,” Ekhanin warns her, handing her the datapad and furtively looking around his barren quarters. They are alone but he is more on edge than she’s ever seen. “We’ve been working on bringing together the best pieces, the most important arguments ...”

“Manuscripts don’t burn, you know,” she mutters but accepts the datapad while he sits next to her on his bed. Jay reads aloud from the datapad: “I ask of my fellow  _ kriesh _ : is there a greater slave than the simple, law-abiding batarian, oppressed by a fabricated system of castes? Are  _ we  _ not the slaves of an outdated system, forged in a bygone era of nepotism, that can only be cleansed by the fires of revolution?” Frowning, she lies back on his bed and says, “Intense stuff.” 

Closing his four eyes like she’d delivered a prophecy, he replies, “That’s  _ Rarok _ from ‘A Treatise on the Confinements of Castes’. She’s amazing; I’ve read everything she’s written.” Opening them again, he adds, quiet and determined, “Change is coming. The Hegemony can’t keep us down forever. The average batarian tires of servitude and isolation.”

“Sounds like this Rarok should be a part of your little insurgence,” Jay laughs lightly but Ekhanin’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“She was,” he mourns. “Then the Ran’sahal took her away.” There is no translation; they are the Hegemony’s cultural protection police who operate secretly, brutally, with impunity. They make people with the wrong opinions disappear; Jay tries not to worry about Ekhanin and his opinions.

“This is my favourite quote,” he prefaces, before reciting from memory: “No batarian is safe so long as slavery poisons our culture as the foundation of Hegemonic tyranny. Violence inflicted upon organics as property spills into violence of man on wife, mother on child, friend on friend. The batarian slaver is the greatest threat to preserving our culture, for surely if they continue their tirade of horrors, there shall not be a people left to tell our stories. To destroy the slaver is an act of courage; nay, of true patriotism.”

Hesitating, she says carefully, “That ... babe, that sounds like war.”

He looks at her, all four eyes glittering with an intensity that makes Jay’s stomach lurch. “Maybe it is. Do you know what it feels like to not have power?”

Jay doesn’t answer, thinking. Does she? Does she have power, now? To avoid the question, she picks up his datapad again, starts flicking through it while she’s lying on her back.

She comes across something that makes her heart stop.

“Ekhanin,” she chokes out, unable to tear her eyes away. Ekhanin looks up from the edge of the bed and realizing what she’s seen, snaps the datapad away from her. 

“Don’t worry about that,” he says quickly, too quickly. Crawling on top of her, he smiles, baring his small sharp teeth. “It’s nothing. Just dreams of strength that we badly need.” He nuzzles his head into her neck, working his arms under her back. “I wish we had someone like you. You’re stronger than anyone I know. You deserve kingdoms to rule, armies to lead and enemies to destroy.” Her chest feels tight in a way that it never has before and she hungrily accepts his kiss, even though she knows he’s partly trying to distract her.

\

The Wolf punishes her for being late on arriving back to Earth. Increasingly, Jay doesn’t feel the need to check in. She runs from one drop point to a negotiation to a sale to a cargo pick up, in space for weeks at a time, before coming home to the Wolf. This seemed to be grating his nerves, which Jay finds interesting in a detached way, nursing the injuries he gave her while back in her room. Isn’t this what he had always wanted her to do?

A message on her omni-tool arrives, using a notification sound reserved for Ekhanin. Gingerly, she moves from her bed to collapsing in her chair. She picks up her tool from the desk and reads the message, amused at his good timing.

_ So was he mad? _

Thinking about what Ekhanin would say if he could see the bruises on her now, she replies,  _ Not so bad. _

_ Right, _ he says, and she can hear his sarcasm.  _ You were being efficient, our route made more sense. A good leader doesn’t penalize innovation.  _

_ Maybe _ , she agrees. Ekhanin has a knack for vocalizing exactly what’s been stewing on her mind.

_ Are you okay?  _ he asks.

She pauses, considers many different answers and even though she knows he’ll know she’s lying, she writes back anyways:  _ Yeah. _

\

“Bh’gra, Jay, they took  _ Bh’gra, _ ” Ekhanin reiterates, lying next to her in bed on her ship. He inhales deeply from his joint of weed. “Fuck. He grew up three plots down from me.” He was a mess when he greeted her at the docks, choking, more upset than she’d ever seen him. She’d brought him to her captain’s quarters and rolled him a joint to calm him down.

“How come?” she asks, accepting the joint he offers and taking a drag. She’s straddling him, running her hands over his chest, under his shirt, enjoying the leathery texture of his skin.

“We told him to be careful and destroy our manifesto, our book, fuck,  _ I told him _ ...”

“What’d he do with it?”

“He had it on him.”

She waits for more, then realizes lamely that this is the sum of his crime. “Are you going to stop publishing?” she asks, trying and failing to not sound overly concerned.

“No!” he snaps, incensed. “Never. You don’t win battles by thumping your chest and raining gunfire down on your enemies. You have to slide in like a needle, get into people’s heads, and then destroy them! Completely annihilating the enemy just when they realize how far in you’ve taken root.”

“That’s how you fight?”

“That’s how you  _ win _ . Maybe it’s not honourable or medal worthy but it’s  _ smart _ . It takes more courage to be smart than to be brave.” He puts the joint down on the nightstand so he can run his hands over her thighs.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” she laughs, shifting forwards so she can lie flat, cheek on his chest, wrapping her arms under him. He embraces her, running one hand through her hair. “I love you but you are high as fuck.” He freezes. She realizes too late what she just said; the words just fell out, she hadn’t meant to say them.

“I am,” he replies, words slow and deliberate. After a pause, he uses his hands to lift her head up from his chest so their eyes meet. “And I love you too.” They both smile nervously, then she puts her head back on his chest and he resumes stroking her hair. Jay breathes again.

\

When she plans the routes on her own, bad things don’t happen and mistakes don’t occur, like when the Wolf or the Owl tries to organize it for her. 

She almost got caught with slaves on board in this star system.  _ Slaves _ . The Alliance would ... if they caught her ... slave-trading is punishable by death. No cargo is worth being executed over, she thinks. Don’t Wolf and Owl  _ get it _ ? This isn’t the place to be for business.

Besides, it makes sense to make a round trip to other systems, doubling back to the system with the Mass Relay so she can stockpile on fuel. The Wolf wants to prioritize based on relationships with suppliers and buyers but that’s  _ dumb _ because it wastes fuel and costs them more money and sometimes even puts her at risk. 

The first treacherous thought takes root: why is he even in charge anyways? 

\

“You want to take down Torfan?” she laughs, putting her drink down. To her surprise, Ekhanin had wrangled a few days leave from the base and came with her to Omega, where there is no interspecies couple strange enough to merit a second glance. It feels so good to be off of the ugliness of Torfan. Omega feels practically safe and friendly, in comparison.

“As long as Torfan exists, the economic benefits of slavery are easily justifiable,” Ekhanin argues passionately. “The immediate, tangible rewards of cheap labour are easier to conceptualize than the long term gains of unshackling ourselves from a system designed to keep us unquestioningly following orders! Did you know Torfan represents thirty-one percent of profits from slavery? That’s almost three times the next highest source at twelve percent. If it was destroyed, it would cripple the industry.”

Jay casts him a skeptical gaze. “How is one guy going to take down an underground slave base guarded by the most hardened mercs in batarian space and concealed in a labyrinth of catacombs?”

“It’s not just me,” he says, fixing her with his gaze. “There are others like me. Many! We have to stay hidden, though. We have to be careful, Jay. You know what could happen to us if the Hegemony found out ...”

“How many?” Jay blasts back, angry and scared for him. “An army, Ekhanin? Because anything less than that and you’d be an idiot,” she continues berating, watching his lower eyes tighten in defensiveness. She presses on. “You know what those guys are like; they’ll defend Torfan to the last man. If you’re going to set fire to that place, the only way to do it is to burn it entirely to the ground. You have to be  _ smart _ , remember?”

“You’re right,” he agrees sadly. “But it has to be done by somebody.” Staring into his drink, he asks, “What do  _ you  _ think of slavery?” They have danced around this topic before but he’s never asked her directly. It feels ominous to be finally having this conversation.

“I think ...” she struggles for words, something that is new for her and only Ekhanin seems to inspire. “The return on investment is shit, the risks are too high. The Alliance is sucking the Council’s cock these days and if I ever got caught --”

“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupts quietly. 

She sighs, defeated. “Okay. I don’t like it. There is no  _ point _ to slavery. I don’t want to be served and waited on by people wearing electro shock collars: they know only fear and obedience. I want to be served by clever, innovative people who take initiative; it’s more efficient and productive. You don’t have to love your followers and they don’t have to love you, but they should feel  _ safe  _ around you. They should feel like you’re the sharpest, strongest, meanest of them all and they’re lucky to be on your side, not plotting ways to escape or kill themselves. Slavery is practiced by the weak. I want to  _ earn  _ power, not buy it.”

While she had been rhapsodizing, he had come over to her side of the booth. She’s not sure how he’ll react to this rare burst of honesty; he kisses her passionately.

“You will have that, I’m sure,” he breathes, full of admiration and longing. “You’re not anyone’s pup; you are fierce and wild and vicious and  _ free _ . Don’t ever settle for less.” The words pacify her but they trigger a warning for Jay, too. Why,  _ fuck _ , why does it sound like he’s saying goodbye?

\

It’s a few days past her seventeenth birthday when she arrives on Torfan, on edge. Ekhanin had sent her a heavily encrypted message last night: it took her almost an hour to decipher. 

_ I’m in a lot of trouble,  _ it read.  _ They’re going to suspect you; don’t let them. Do whatever you have to do to stay safe. Gods, Jay. You were the best thing about that place. I’m so sorry. _

Looking back years later, even then, Jay knew it would be the last message she’d ever receive from him.

“Our honoured  _ pup _ ,” the General Bas’khar greets, a taunt to his voice. She hates that name. She fucking hates that name.

Bas’khar and his men drive her to the base. He walks her to her room -- Jay tries not to gag, thinking about what’s to come, reflecting on Ekhanin’s message -- and sits on her bed while she puts her bag down. She takes out a comb and brushes her hair in the mirror, just to not look at him.

“Ekhanin and his friends were caught with the designs for bombs, pup.” Jay does not react, thinking about what she’d seen on his datapad all those months ago. It had been only a matter of time, she tries to tell herself. You knew this would happen. “Would you know anything about that?”

_ Do whatever you have to do to stay safe. _ There is a bottle of levo-rum on her dresser, thank god, and two glasses. “The day I give a shit about batarian politics, I will light a cigarette after dousing myself in gasoline,” she replies dryly. Putting the brush down and moving to the booze, she musters her most bored voice while pouring two drinks: “He was a good fuck, though. What I want to know is who’s going to warm my bed now.”

“Arrangements can be made.” He comes up behind her, hands on her waist, breathing into her ear.  _ Don’t let your skin crawl. Don’t tense up. _

_ Do whatever you have to do _ . Someone who didn’t give a shit about Ekhanin would happily jump into bed with the next batarian to satisfy their fetish, Jay tells herself, throwing her drink back, eyes watering at the sting of potent liquor on her throat. 

His hands are moving lower, massaging her hips, pulling her closer to him while she fills up the other glass. She can feel his erection pressed against her and she manages not to shudder. Taking a deep breath, she whips around, pushing the glass at him. Whatever it takes. “You offering, or are you just going to fucking tease me?” She grabs the hem of her shit and pulls it off over her head, dropping it carelessly on the ground. He sips rum while his four eyes drink in her naked torso; Jay stays steady, stares back at him daringly.

Sitting down on her bed, he beckons her with a motion of his hand. Keeping her breathing even, Jay walks over and straddles him, pressing her mouth against his, tasting liquor. He grabs her wrist and twists them around her back, smiling with victory. The last thing she wants is to look at his face, so she goes in to kiss him again. This time he bucks his hips, flipping them over, so he’s hovering over her on the bed, pinning her wrists above her.

“I hope your boyfriend wasn’t a gentle lover,” he muses, burying his face into her neck and biting down  _ hard _ . Jay jerks against him and he laughs into her skin, tightening his grip on her wrists. “Don’t tell me you’re so fragile. I’ll destroy you in bed at this rate.” He bites hard again, on her breast this time, drawing a small amount of blood with jagged teeth.

Even though she can feel the sting of his hate every time he touches her, she challenges, “Go on and show me how real batarian men fuck, then.” She feels his smirk against her pelvis while he moves over her skin, leaving marks. For the next few hours she has to work very hard to pretend to enjoy herself, although she’s not sure why she bothers; he doesn’t seem to care.

\

Torfan sucks again with no Ekhanin to greet her and escape away with, pretending like Torfan wasn’t the hell of crushed freedom, bullying mercs and pointless cruelty. Everything sucks. She wasn’t joking with Ekhanin; the Alliance is patrolling more and more heavily and her chances of getting caught just keep going up. Like the Wolf cares; he’s not the one out here, risking his goddamn neck. She is smarter and stronger than him and she always has been. Ekhanin thought so.

The Reds should restructure, she thinks, sipping her coffee at breakfast, glad the Wolf is absorbed in his datapad and not paying attention to her glowering. His stupid datapad, and his stupid coffee; ugh, he is an  _ idiot _ . A dangerous idiot but an idiot. They should get out of the slave trade, maybe even sell out some of their fellow contacts for reward cash from the Alliance or the AELE, reinvest the money into more redsand or stardust, push the product out to colonies more often but in smaller batches, so it’s more potent when it reaches customers ... 

He tells her she’s to go to Titan for chemical composites necessary to brew more dragon fire. Dragon fire is too expensive, the college kids don’t go for it, she already has a plan to swing by Thessia for more hallex ...  _ Fuck this _ . She’s not doing it. She’ll argue it to the death. “And then you’re going back to Torfan.”

She is not ever fucking going back there again. She is so. Fucking. Done. 

So she nods politely, puts her dishes away and steals into her room. An idea started formulating in her head while she chewed eggs sullenly. Swallowing nervously as she sits on her bed, she double-checks that her messages are end-to-end encrypted on her omni-tool. She pulls out an old saved message and writes to “Smiley”, trying to remember the words from the book:  _ I’ve been thinking lately: I’d say, morality is vested in the aim _ .

There’s a full thirty minute delay before the perfect response:  _ Difficult to know what one’s aims are, that’s the trouble. _

She breathes a sigh of relief. It’s time to find out just how well the Wolf had taught her, she thinks bitterly, and writes:  _ Not this time.  _

She waits for a response. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:  
> “Master and Margarita,” Bulgakov. “Manuscripts don’t burn.”  
> “Common Sense,” Paine. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”


	3. The Shepard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, this is a long chapter guys, apologies. It just didn't feel right to break it anywhere, even as I was rereading it before posting.
> 
> Also, this was very much inspired by the memoir [Agent Storm by Morten Storm](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00JD07IJ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). If you're interested in the way human intelligence gathering and spying works in the modern world, it's a really brutally honest memoir about a guy who was basically an embedded spy with terrorist networks in the middle east. Very interesting.

When Anderson gets the ping, he’s almost forgotten the contact’s identity. After his botched Spectre candidacy, the Alliance had tried to placate him with a large helping of quiet, shadowy special operations missions, trying to keep him quiet before starting another embarrassing shitstorm over Saren’s treachery.  _ Here you go, you can play Spectre with us _ , their actions seem to say. He milks it for what it’s worth and now has more intelligence assets than he can remember off the top of his head. 

Then it comes back to him: the uncanny, deceptive teenage girl he’d met when they’d busted the quarian arms traders almost a year ago.

Criminal trafficking isn’t technically the Alliance’s domain. But the politicians are bickering with the Council for more sway, the police forces on Earth are ill-equipped to handle intergalactic crime and the last thing humanity needs is a bad rep from growing human criminal empires while trying to prove  _ yes _ , we can play nice and civilized, too. If the public  _ knew  _ just how closely the Earth law enforcement and the military police were cooperating ... well, that’s why they chose N7s like Anderson. Subtle, tactful, perceptive. No need for the civil liberties intelligentsia to get their panties in a twist.

_ Jay _ . That was her name. He’d let her go on purely the gut instinct that there was much more to her then met the eye, and that she was smart enough to see the writing on the wall for the Reds. He writes her back.

\

He’s en route to an expensive but low-key restaurant, wondering what to expect of Jay. The teenager is there when he arrives, lounging lazily in a plush chair, bottle of wine already cracked open. Not a trace of the shy, victimized girl she’d pretended to be back when they first met. It’s unsettling, Anderson thinks, and very telling.

“Are you even old enough for that?” he asks, making sure no one is in earshot, laying on a hint of amusement. He doesn’t want to antagonize this potential source but she can’t think she’ll get away with whatever she wants. She cocks an eyebrow at him and swirls her wine around in its glass before taking a defiant sip. She cranes her neck in a soft invitation, eyes never leaving his face.

Allowing himself a conspiratorial smile, he sits down and fills his own cup, golden liquid creating condensation as it hits the glass. Then he reaches over and refills her glass too, ever the gentleman. He waits for her reaction; she smirks at his show of perfect table manners.

“I didn’t dress for a date,” she says innocently. She’s wearing clean, light jeans and an eggplant cable knit. He’s in dark jeans and a handsome, simple dinner jacket over his white button-up. Neither of them is causal nor lavish enough for the wait-staff to take extra notice of them, which Anderson suspects they both had intended. 

“Your mistake, then,” he teases. “ One might stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, but one is still obliged to dress for dinner. ” 

“Regency romance, Anderson? Sort of took you for a mystery thriller kind of man.”

“You’re half right, kid. I hail proudly from the same country as Heyer. But maybe you should check your reading list, because she happened to write a lot of detective fiction, too.” This draws a real grin from her. She loves the challenge, delights in his insolence; she’s testing him. 

“A disaster, huh?” She tilts her head, dark eyes glimmering with something far too powerful and predatory for someone her age. “Hoping to stand on the brink of my deep chasm?” There is too much coyness in her tone to be joking. 

Without thinking, he lets his gaze sweep over her, evaluating her appeal. She is pretty but not stunning: enough to use her looks when she needs them but not enough to attract piles of unsolicited attention. He remembers with a jolt that no matter how she conducts herself, she’s a  _ teenager  _ and that he’s in his  _ goddamn thirties _ . Unnerved by her brazen touting of sex on a man almost twice her age (and the fact that he almost fell for it), he takes a gulp of wine instead. Appetizers arrive and he is saved from having to answer immediately.

She isn’t really attracted, he realizes, this is just another test. A test to see what kind of power she has over him. She needs blunt, clear, boundaries.

When the waiter leaves, he says while flipping open his napkin across his lap, “I am not going to fuck you.” He smiles kindly, not intending to offend. “You don’t need to use sex to get what you want from me. I think you’re very interesting, Jay. A very clever girl.” He pauses and leans in, serious and focused. “I am a rational man; give me something rational to work with, not your salacious games. You’ll have to get a boyfriend your own age.” She gives him a sharp, curious look; then shrugs, unconcerned with his rejection.

“Fine by me. But before we get to business, you’re going to tell me just how much of this is being watched. Other than the snipers you have on the exits and the vehicle patrol across the street.” He should be impressed but somehow, he’s not. This seems like a perfectly fitting thing to say for this sinister, charismatic girl. He makes a show of completely powering down his omni-tool.

“Anything else?” she warns more than asks, eyes intensely holding his. “Do not lie to me, Anderson. I’ll know and I won’t like it.” The mood has changed; the last wisps of flirtation swatted away.

“Nothing else,” he holds his hands up in surrender. “Those were just safety precautions. You understand.” She nods slowly. He cuts to the chase: “Jay, I found you running with the Reds in Alliance space. I let you go that day. Do I get the real story today?”

“Maybe. I’m in a hunting mood and I think you’ll be interested in the kind of big game I’ve got my sights on.”

“Yeah? Can you catch us an owl?” he asks, sipping his own wine, hoping she wasn’t stupid enough to kill him by poison in public. She doesn’t answer, thinking. So to be sure, he starts explaining, “We believe the Owl is second-in-command to the Red Wolf and might be able to lead us to --”

“I know who he is,” she cuts him off, condescending. “And yes, I can get you to him.”

“We need more than just him. We need evidence to put this guy away for a long time; he’s a cagey fellow and covers his tracks well.”

“I can get you that.”

“We’d need proof of money laundering, illegal production of recreational narcotics, environmental hazards from chemical dumps --”

“All of it. I can do that.”

Anderson crosses his arms. He had suspected she knew of the Owl, maybe even met him a few times, but her confidence is borderline absurd. 

“How?” He can’t help himself, curiosity tickling his brain.

“You’re familiar with the Trojan War?” Jay leans in, resting her arms on the table, eyes glittering with savage intelligence. Anderson nods, transfixed. She recites in an almost sing-song voice: “ What a thing was this, the mighty men wrought and endured in the carven horse, bearing to the Trojans death and fate.”

Anderson exhales deeply, understanding her implication. “Really? You can do that?”

“Yes. For a hundred thousand credits.”

Anderson chokes on his wine. “A  _ hundred thousand _ ?”

She smiles widely, takes the bottle and refills both their glasses. “And for another two hundred thousand, I can get you the Wolf himself, on a platter, apple in his mouth.”

\

“This kid wants  _ three hundred thousand credits _ ?” Senior Detective Jong scoffs. 

“With a down-payment of ten thousand,” Anderson adds glumly, leaning back in his chair.

“What?!”

“I talked her down from twenty thousand, be glad.”

“And you really think she can get us the evidence to take these two guys down? How the hell does a seventeen year old girl have access to these kinds of criminals -- what is she, their preferred escort?”

“I believe her, Jong. Don’t you remember all those strange reports of a kid hanging around the Wolf a couple years back? Being spotted with him?”

“Yeah, but they were sporadic and unreliable. Maybe he’s just a child molester, too,” Jong shrugged with the apathy of a man who’d spent a lifetime reading horrific crime reports. “Another reason to put him away for life. Fucker.”

“Right, and you told me you closed the case on the kid. And now there’s this teenage girl running around with him --”

“-- okay, one, lots of teenage girls are in gangs and two, it’s not like it’s unusual for gangsters to surround themselves with young women --”

“-- but what if that kid just grew up? What if she’s it? It seems like she’s his ... protégé, of sorts.”

“You’re not suspicious you’re being played?”

“Maybe we are,” Anderson concedes. “But ... I have a good feeling about this. She told me way too much valuable information to just be playing me. She says as a sign of good faith, she’ll get us one of his high-ranking thugs, Abhid, within a month of the down payment. The one running crack-houses on Mars.”

“Ten thousand -- fuck, Anderson. What if she just uses that money to finance more illegal activity? Do you have any idea what kind of shit we can both get into if that surfaces? The Alliance and the AELE funding black market activities via criminal espionage? Using a  _ minor _ ?!” 

“She thought about that too. I checked it out; the account numbers she gave me lead to an Illium bank account that’s completely tied into high-interest earnings. Not liquidable at all for at least ten years -- long after this case will close, hopefully.” Anderson sighs, “Look. I know this isn’t Alliance jurisdiction, but the kid wants me as her contact. She doesn’t trust anyone else. As such, the Alliance is willing to pay for the capture of the Wolf. The Reds have moved into slave-trading humans in batarian space and the brass wants to strike a blow at their heart, not just fend off colony-raids.”

“Right,” Jong rejoins dryly, collapsing into a chair. “After the AELE has fronted the first hundred thousand. Real nice.” He buries his face in his hands. “I’ll see what I can do.”

\

This time, he’s been watching Jay’s footage live.

She’s been wearing a camera that fits into a contacts lens, sending them a live feed of whatever she’s seeing. Sometimes she has to disappear off world for weeks and can’t send them footage, won’t say where she’s been, but Anderson is learning not to ask too many questions with this odd girl. She’ll give what she needs to give and no more or less.

The level of intimacy she has with Owl is incredible. Running into her that day was a stroke of once-in-a-generation kind of luck for Anderson, the same kind of luck that let him survive the war, dammit. He’s a lucky bastard. From Jay’s camera view, he’s looking right at Owl’s bespeckled, pale face, framed by large glasses. The Owl has been explaining the finer points of a new illegal weapon mod to Jay with the nervousness and eagerness of a professor. Jay has no trouble keeping up, asking questions, keeping him talking, carefully phrasing comments to get Owl to reveal the mod’s source, it’s implications, it’s potential customers.

_ “It’s too bad about Abhid,” the Owl says suddenly, looking right at her.  _

Anderson sucks in his breath and imagines Jay doing the same. 

_ “This whole mod was his idea. He was getting edgy about being caught on one of his runs to Mars,” he continues, sadly. _

_ “Then maybe we should forget about it,” Jay laughs cruelly, convincingly unconcerned. She leans back in the chair and cocks her head sideways, making the camera in her contacts lens tilt slightly too. “That stupid son of a bitch got himself caught. Any idea of his isn’t worth shit.” _

_ “It wasn’t his fault,” the Owl warns, picking up the mod, inspecting it. _

_ “Well yeah, idiots are just born like that, they can’t help it,” she replies cheekily. Owl gives her a stern look. _

_ “No: I’ve been thinking. Abhid was always careful, always changing ships, routes, not even taking the same crew each time ... it just seems strange.” _

_ “Yeah?” Jay asks, sounding bored. “Spit it out, Owl.” _

_ “Just something I’ve been thinking about. Maybe his arrest wasn’t an accident.” His gaze locks onto Jay’s. Jay holds steady, staring him down. A long moment passes. “I want your help, Jay. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open for anything ... suspicious.” He looks away.  _

_ “Shit, Owl, this sounds serious. Maybe we should tell the Wolf?” _

_ “No -- not yet. It’s just an idea right now, I don’t want to bother him till it’s something concrete.” _

Anderson lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

\

Anderson had fallen asleep at his desk when a noise wakes him up. The live feed is still on; probably by accident. Jay usually takes the contacts lenses out by this hour.

_ “Why didn’t you tell me about Bas’khar?”  _

Anderson recognizes the Wolf’s voice immediately and he tenses up. Jay is sitting on a rich green upholstered couch, a bottle of whiskey and two glasses gracing the dark wood coffee table. The Wolf isn’t in her view; the sound is almost coming from behind her.

_ “He’s useful,” Jay says in a bored tone. “He keeps the other batarians off my back.” _

_ “By keeping you flat on yours?” the Wolf rejoins in a cutting tone. _

Anderson scowls. What a piece of shit, he thinks. Jay, however, is unperturbed. 

_ “Only two types of people, right?” she replies breezily. She sips her whiskey, a light caramel colour on ice. “Why?” Sounding concerned, she asks, “Is there something about Bas’khar that I should know?” _

_ “No,” the Wolf replies. “But Jasmine’s told me about what’s been going on. The way he treats you; sending you back looking like you were returning from a hospital wing, not his bed.”  _

_ “He’s got some rough kinks,” Jay deadpans. “I can handle them.” _

Anderson has spent enough time watching her lie by now that he picks up the tension laced in her voice. 

_ “You let him beat you like you’re one his slaves.”  _

Anderson cringes. He decides, right then and there, that he hates this Bas’khar guy.

_ The Wolf finally comes into view, sitting on the couch beside her. “You’re a punching bag of a slut to him.” He says this all calmly, matter-of-the-factly. _

_ “I can handle it,” Jay repeats firmly, dropping her eyes to her scotch. _

_ The Wolf puts a hand on her thigh and insists, “I don’t like it. It’s a sign of disrespect: to the Reds and to me, pup. We need to deal with him.” _

_ “No,” Jay shakes her head in disagreement. “No, trust me. Bas’khar is popular and well-positioned -- staying on good terms with him is good for us. I know what I’m doing.” Jay still doesn’t look at him so he puts his hand under her chin and forces her to look up and meet his gaze. _

_ “Maybe,” the Wolf concedes, pulling his hand away and reaching for his scotch glass on the coffee table. “But as soon as we don’t need him anymore, I’m going to kill that fucker myself.” He leans in and kisses her forehead. _

Anderson finds himself agreeing with the Wolf, approving of his words and almost ...  _ grateful  _ that Jay has the Wolf looking out for her. He does care about the girl, Anderson thinks. In his own emotionally-crippled, violent way, the Wolf cares.

For a moment, Anderson feels overwhelmed by guilt.

\

“So, you’re not going to like this,” Jong begins, unwrapping his street-meat burger. They’re at the office, a working lunch, reviewing Jay’s case. “And I want you to know, that, you know, I don’t even really agree, but --”

“What’s this about?” Anderson snaps, concerned. 

“It’s about our little shepherd,” Jong says and wipes his hands on the paper napkin, smearing ketchup on it, before reaching into his desk and retrieving a datapad. He types in a keycode, decrypting it, before tossing it to Anderson. 

Anderson catches it, flipping through the files. “For fuck’s sake ...” he mutters, resting the pad on his desk and burying his face in his hands. 

“There’s only one reason she’d be reaching out to the Eclipse,” Jong says through a mouth of burger. 

“This is bad,” Anderson sighs. “Are we going to talk to her about this?”

“Man, come on,” Jong replies, leaning back in his seat.

“She’s just a fucking kid. A teenager.

Jong scoffs. “The most ruthless teenager I’ve ever met. Seriously, Anderson -- she scares the shit out of me, and I’m not the only one. Who knows what kind of contingency plan she has in place if we tell her we’re on to her?”

“You can’t know that,” Anderson argues. “The Reds contact other gangs all the time. Maybe she’s just trying to get intel on them for us.”

“Doubt it, Anderson. Read the fucking correspondence. Not to mention all that missing footage -- huge gaps in what she’s doing, who she’s talking to.”

“She agreed to help us, not to 24/7 surveillance. Maybe she just wants some goddamn privacy.” Anderson thinks about the one that’s too old for her, the one that sends her back with bruises flowering like weeds on her face.

\

Three months later, they corner Owl. He’s walking out of the university, datapad in hand, wearing a tweed jacket, when the police come out in full tactical gear and surround him. Anderson isn’t there, obviously, it’s one thing for the Alliance to co-operate by sharing Special Ops resources for intel, another for them to have their soldiers making arrests on Earth’s soil. There’d be protests on the streets if that happened. All the same, he wishes he could fist-bump Jay while he’s watching the news coverage.  _ We got the bastard. Nice work, kid. _

The moment of victory doesn’t last. Within the hour, he gets a call and an invite from Captain Hackett to meet him at the local Alliance base. In his office, Hackett pours Anderson a scotch and cuts to the chase. “She might be a problem. We have no idea what she’s planning after this is all over and quite frankly, the last thing the Alliance needs is another mini-Wolf out there in Council space.”

Anderson accepts the drink and cautiously asks, “What are you proposing, sir?”

\

_ “I have every reason to believe it’s someone close to me, pup,” the Wolf snarls at Jay, eyes glinting. “And how many people are close to me?” _

Anderson swears he can hear Jay’s heart pounding in her chest while watching. 

_ She doesn’t answer. Instead, she holds his gaze _ . 

_ The Wolf gets up from his desk, pacing the room. Jay lights a cigarette and holds it out to him, hand shaking very slightly. The Wolf stops, stares, then takes it from her. He seems calmer for a moment. Lighting another cigarette for herself, Jay perches on his desk and exhales a cloud of smoke. “Fuck. Owl. FUCK,” she mutters angrily.  _

Anderson worries her voice is trembling too much; it’ll give her away, for sure ...

_ Wolf sighs, weary. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and comes to lean his hip on the desk, beside her. Eyes as cold and grey as a London morning, hiding dark alleys.  _

_ “I think I know who it is, pup,” Wolf says cryptically, eyes hard. _

_ “Yeah?” Jay breathes, the perfect mix of eager and skeptical, not breaking eye contact.  _

_ “Yeah.” The Wolf’s eyes soften with the smallest touch of regret. “Meet me at the Swamp tonight, quarter after midnight.”  _

\

“You’re not going,” Anderson seethes, meeting her quickly behind a pungent vegan cafe. The alley smells like rotting tofu and too much tea tree oil. He had requested this meeting impromptu. “He knows, Jay. We’re getting you out.”

“You don’t know he knows! You’re just guessing.” She is smoking, the only sign of nervousness. “I’m shocked -- guessing is destructive to the logical faculty.”

“ _ No. _ ” He doesn’t want to play her games and be the Dr. Watson to her enigma. Her dark eyes become obsidian.

“How the fuck are you going to stop me?” She turns to leave but Anderson catches her wrist. Glowering, she takes her cigarette and presses it against his hand until he lets go in a hiss of pain. She tosses her cigarette on the ground and walks away, swallowed by the market crowd.

\

_ The Wolf is standing on the soggy carpets, one incandescent light bulb swaying from a breeze coming through the cracked windows.  _

Anderson learned that it’s called the Swamp because the complex of abandoned social housing floods all the time, leaving the basements always filled with some water. It’s been listed as a renovation project on city council’s budget for decades but no one ever comes around anymore.

_ There’s only four other people in the room: one woman, three men. Jay scans them all, nods her head in greeting, then moves to take her place by the Wolf. The lighting is eerie and catches his grey eyes, giving them a yellow glow, making him seem truly canine for a moment.  _

_ “You should have known,” Wolf says to her, jaw tight. “It was your responsibility.” _

Oh god, Anderson thinks. He should have organized a ground team for an emergency extraction.

_ “I have a lot of responsibilities,” Jay replies coldly. “And I’m pretty fucking good at them. Could you be a bit more specific?” _

_ “I don’t have time for your attitude, pup. This is serious.” _

_ “I don’t have time for your games! You said we’d get payback for Owl, and that’s why I came. Where’s the fucker? Who did this to us?" _

_ The Wolf looks at both his men, and then nods. Two spring into action -- _

Anderson tenses, they’re going to grab Jay and when they do ... fuck, the Wolf is not a merciful man, Anderson might never see that damn kid again ...

\--  _ and grab the other woman in the room, forcing her to her knees. “Get off of me!” the woman growls. _

_ “Jasmine?” Jay spits out the name like a curse. “The fuck is going on?” The Wolf throws Jay back with a biotic pulse and the camera goes blurry, the sound of furniture smashing. The Wolf walks up to Jay, Lifts her biotically then throws her against the wall again. He pins her there with Stasis _ . 

Anderson has never seen a biotic fire off so many attacks in a row before. What the hell? Doesn’t his amp need to cool at all?

_ “She was on your team, pup! How did you not notice? How could you let this get past you?” _

_ “How do you even know it was her? She’s always looked out for me; never given me a reason not to trust her. What the fuck is going on?” Jay pleads, twisting in Wolf’s grip. _

_ “Show her.” _

_ The third man steps forward, holding up a shirt button. “What? Is being a seamstress a predisposition for betrayal?” Jay sneers at the man. _

_ “It’s a camera, pup,” the Wolf says quietly. “We found it on Jasmine.” He releases her from the Stasis and steps closer to her. With one hand, he tilts her chin up. _

_ “There will be consequences for your blindness,” he says, as blandly as one says that needles hurt or taxes must be paid. “But we’ll start with this.” He must have pushed something at her, because Jay looks down and sees the gun he’s putting in her hand. The Wolf moves out of the way, leaving a clear view of Jasmine. _

_ “No! I didn’t!” Jasmine exclaims, still being held in place. She starts struggling. “You  _ know _ me ... I owe my life to the Reds. I would have been another dead street rat if it wasn’t for you. Please.” She is too tough to cry but her eyes reveal a fear and devotion deeper than tears. “Jay, I would never betray you, I’ve saved your life so many times, please ...” _

_ “If the Wolf says you did it,” Jay declares without remorse, cocking the gun. Her hand shakes as her voice does not when she takes aim. “Then that’s the only verdict I need. You see, Jasmine, betrayal is a disease.” Jay casts one last glance at the Wolf, who nods affirmatively,  then turns back to Jasmine. Shaking, Jasmine closes her eyes.  _

_ Jay pulls the trigger. Pieces of Jasmine splatter against the men holding her, and there’s only a bloody, caved-in ball where her head used to be. _

_ / _

“Lucky break, kid,” Anderson says, when Jay slips into the hotel room. For once, the other officers on the case are present: Dawson, who archives and analyzes the videos Jay sends; Jong, the lead detective on the case; Singh, their expert in criminal relationship matrixes. It’s an emergency meeting at 3am, three hours after Jasmine’s execution. Jay sinks onto the bed, wincing, badly bruised. She notices the beer --  _ Jong brought beer, the fucking unprofessional piece of shit -- _ and holds her hand out for one.

“What the hell happened to you?” Anderson asks, handing her a cold beer from the ice bucket.

She fixes an unflinching, fortressed gaze on him. “ _ Consequences _ ,” she replies tonelessly, holding the bottle against her face like an ice pack. He knows that she won’t say more and she probably took the camera out before going to see the Wolf after the shooting. They will never know what he did to her. This puts Anderson in a bad mood.

“Lucky?!” Dawson exclaims, furious. “That was too fucking close. And we’re killing people now? This is supposed to be intel only! What were you thinking, Jay?”

“Look at her!” Anderson snarls back, gesturing to Jay. “What do you think the Wolf would have done to Jay if she  _ refused _ ?”

There’s a loud pop of a bottle being opened. “Anderson’s right,” Jay affirms quietly. They all look at her. She recites the next words like a prayer: “Hesitation is weakness. Weakness is fear. Fear is guilt.” 

“You know he’s not  _ actually  _ a wolf, right?” Jong rolls his eyes and Anderson wants to punch his insensitive face. “He can’t  _ smell fear _ on his prey. And you are so not old enough to be drinking that.” 

She scowls at him and takes a large swig in response. Bringing the bottle back down, she replies softly, “Don’t be so sure.” For the first time since Anderson’s known her, there is a frightened phantom haunting her eyes.

“What if you’re the prey, Jay?” Dawson replies, gentle now.

“It’s true,” Singh agrees. She’s sipping a cup of tea, eyes red-rimmed. “For all we know, the Wolf does know it’s Jay, and he was just toying with her.”

“Or testing her,” Jong suggests.

“We’re calling this off,” Anderson says with finality. “This is insane. We’ve already put away half of the Wolf’s top guys, and we got Owl. We can find another way to Wolf.”

“No way! We’re too close!” Jong disagrees but Singh and Dawson look uncomfortable.

“Anderson has a point, Jong. What if Jay had been shot? What if that got out to the public? ‘Minor killed in action while spying on crime lords during joint police-military crackdown’? Holy fuck. Talk about a public relations  _ disaster _ , if not a goddamn Parliamentary investigation.”

“No,” Jay snaps, tone clipped. “There is no out. We have to keep going, slip in like a needle, if we want to destroy him. It’s the only way to win.”

Anderson sighs. “Kid, look, you’ve done good work for us already. We can get you somewhere safe --”

“You  _ cowards  _ \--”

“No!” Anderson shouts, angry. Dropping his voice, he pulls his datapad from his briefcase. He’s ready for her arguments this time; he pulls up a photo album he prepared specifically for this moment. Tossing the datapad at her, he growls, “Look at that! Do you see what the Wolf does to people who cross him?” 

Putting her half-finished beer on the nightstand, Jay picks up the datapad and starts flipping through the gruesome images. They’re burned into Anderson’s mind; bloody, carelessly cut stumps; charred, burned flesh; bruises swollen to green and purple covering the dark black of internal bleeding ... Anderson swallows, continues, “He will do  _ one hundred times that _ to you when he catches you. Do you fucking understand, Jay? You have nothing to prove!”

“ _ If _ .”

“What?!”

“ _ If  _ the Wolf catches me,” she clarifies, casually examining the images on the datapad. Quirking an eyebrow as if examining a piece of furniture that was only mildly interesting, she asks in a bored voice, “Is this supposed to fucking scare me? Or you just sharing your porn collection to cheer me up?”

“ _ Jay! _ ”

A feral glint, a very Wolf-like glint, appears in her eyes. She moves her gaze around the room, locking eyes with everyone until each looks away. In a terribly threatening voice, barely above a whisper, she continues, “If you all are too pussy to see this thing through, I’ll do it myself.” She gets up, declares, “I’m going to be off-world for a week. Use that time to find a spine again.”

“Where are you going?” Jong asks incredulously.

“I have to get back. The Wolf will be worried about me.” 

_ “Worried?”  _ Anderson can’t help himself, the words just come out. Watching her limp to the door ignites a deep anger in him. He hates the Wolf even more and it’s starting to feel personal. “In my experience, men who beat up teenage girls don’t have a right to worry about them.”

She looks back at him sharply and says, “It’s nothing personal. I fucked up; he had to do it.” Jay continues to the door.

“Jay!” It’s Jong who calls out. She stops with her hand on the doorknob, waiting. “Jay, wait. We don’t even know why or how Jasmine had that button camera on her, we should talk --”

“Yes, we do,” Jay replies calmly. She looks over her shoulder at them, face steel again. “I put it on her.”

She leaves a horrified silence in her wake.

\

They are so close. They have all the evidence they need on the Wolf and finally, this six month investigation can come to a close. Anderson wants Jay to be off the hook just as much as he wants the Wolf behind bars. 

“This will help her, too,” Hackett insists on the encrypted vidcom. “You’re right, she is just a teenager, and she needs some guidance.”

“I don’t see how this is guidance,” Anderson snaps. They’re long past ‘permission to speak freely’ and Anderson is in no mood for proprietary. “More like a whip crack.”

“It’ll keep her off of making some poor decisions. She’ll be grateful, eventually,” Hackett reassures. “You’re too attached to her.”

“Someone has to be,” Anderson replies back, exasperated. “Someone has to be looking out for her.”

Captain Hackett leans back in his chair on the vidcom. “I know what it’s like to grow up rough, Anderson. There’s a part of that that never leaves you. She’s dangerous.”

“I just --”

“This way, you’ll have a chance to help her. Help her for real, David. Give her a life with some meaning and keep an eye on her. End of discussion.”

\

This time, Anderson is not staying behind. Luckily he doesn’t have to, because they have intel that the Wolf has a private transport ready to leave off-world, making this intergalactic jurisdiction, meaning the Alliance can be officially involved.

He’s in full tactical gear approaching the non-descript, glass office tower. Jay is with the Wolf -- miraculously, he still doesn’t suspect her, and he expects her to leave with him. 

Anderson knows that won’t last long, even if they’re lucky. Not if things go according to plan.

The private shuttle is waiting for them on the roof to take them to their spaceship. They have eleven minutes to climb all seventeen flights of stairs quietly. There is surprisingly little resistance and Anderson realizes half the guards are already dead, killed quietly with a knife slit to the throat. He knows who did that and it makes him feel a little sick. Eight minutes. 

She’s bought them time though and they ascend quickly, a mass of black armour and beams from bright headlights. Four minutes. They’ll be leaving soon and they have three more flights --

\-- one minute, and there’s a loud boom upstairs. It was happening;  _ shit _ . Anderson and the others pick up the pace. 

Minus one minute. They should be gone by now but there’s still blasts and smashing coming from the penthouse. They’re almost there --

\-- Anderson kicks open the door.

In a second, Anderson takes in what he sees. Jay is being forced to stand protectively in front of the Wolf by virtue of the barrel of his gun at her back. Light breaks in beams across the office floor, lit by the stars and the dimming lights from other towers nearby. The Wolf and Jay stand in the centre of the room. 

“I almost thought you were going to be late,” the Wolf drawls calmly, taking in the dozen officers filing into the room. Anderson, in the lead, takes a step forward and the Wolf shoves his gun hard into Jay’s back, making her wince. 

Anderson freezes, even though he knew things could go sideways, seeing her so vulnerable and obedient with over a dozen guns pointed at her still hurts him. She’s staring at the floor, abashed and ashamed and still somehow defiant, looking for all the world like any other teenager in over her head. 

“Speak,” the Wolf orders. He nudges again, less hard this time. 

“We’re going to go,” she says without emotion, eyes still on the ground. “You’re going to let us go or he’ll kill me.” 

He smashes her on the back of her head with the butt of his pistol -- hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to knock her out. Anderson resists the urge to lurch forwards and catch her when she stumbles. Anderson notes that she only gasped in pain, didn’t make a sound, and stood back up as soon as she was able. He also notes, oddly enough, the Wolf looks almost  _ proud  _ of her for a split second.

“I raised you better than that,” the Wolf warns, still quiet and calm. “Try and be more polite. Ask them nicely.”

Jay looks up and meets Anderson’s eyes. “Would you please let Wolf go, so that he doesn’t kill me?” But she’s not faking anything; she’s not trying to sound helpless or innocent, the way he’d seen her con others. She’s not trying to sell it at all.

Anderson understands. He just really fucking wishes it hadn’t come to this; shooting kids, even evil genius kids, is not a thing he ever wants to get used to doing.

He fires first, hits both Jay and the Wolf in the first go. There’s a cacophony of shots that follow from the other officers. The impact destabilizes the Wolf just enough so that when he pulls the trigger, he hits Jay in the calf instead of her back. This time Jay does yelp in pain and collapses, blood running from the Wolf’s bullet to her left calf and Anderson’s bullet that passed through her right arm.

The Wolf is on the ground too, writhing where his hand had been been hit by Anderson’s bullet and two other bullets that hit his chest and thigh.

Anderson bolts to Jay, who’s sitting on the ground and using her good arm to hold her leg tightly folded against her. Her face is white as a ghost and the pool of blood around her is growing. He pulls medigel off his belt and applies it to her arm. “Hold this here,” he instructs. She obeys, taking over the medi-gel pack on her arm, and he begins unfolding her leg, turning her over to see the damage.

He breaths out a sigh of relief: “You’re lucky, kid, look like that asshole’s bullet only grazed you.” He checks the floor where the Wolf and Jay had been standing and confirmed: yes, there was a bullet hole in the floor, marking the near miss.

“How,” she says tightly as Anderson applies medi-gel to her leg. “How the fuck did he know? How’d my cover get blown? I was fucking careful. I’m _ sure _ .”

Anderson appraises the damage to the room and says dryly, “Blew up a lot more than that, kid.”

She raises an eyebrow at this but hands him back the flask, taking over the task of holding the medi-gel to her throat. “Fuck!” she exclaims, coughing. “This isn’t how --  _ fuck _ !” She’s glaring in the general direction of the Wolf, now handcuffed and being treated for his wounds.

Anderson puts a hand on her shoulder “You don’t owe him anything. You don’t have to talk him.”

With a scowl, she shrugs his hand off and starts crawling over to the Wolf. Taking pity on her, Anderson offers a hand, which she takes, and helps her stand up and hobble over to the Wolf.

The kid needs this moment for some closure. More than once, it has occurred to Anderson that the Wolf isn’t just Jay’s boss. He’s her mentor, her idol, probably the first adult in her life to ever give a shit about her, and the thought makes Anderson’s stomach drop. She’d told him how she’d met the Wolf, how a crooked cop had  _ handed  _ her to him so the Wolf could show her the underbelly of Earth and beyond. 

Eyes glittering with malice, the Wolf says to Jay in a cordial tone, “I can’t say I’m not impressed, pup.” He ignores Anderson entirely.

“I’m not your  _ pup _ .” Her tone is ice, shattering the moment as if she’d had a gun with cryo-loaded ammo. “You deserve this, you know?” The Wolf says nothing, staring coolly at her. “What!” Jay snaps. “You fucked up, you’ve been fucking up for so long, you --”

“And all this went according to plan, then?” the Wolf replies, sounding only politely interested. “Do you know how I knew it was you, Jay? Do you know who told me?” 

“That’s enough! Get him out of here!” Anderson demands, backing up with Jay’s good arm still slung over his shoulders as she leans on him.The officers stand him up and march him away. Anderson turns his head and watches Jay. It’s dark up here; he thinks he sees her blink back tears, but she turns around and sees him staring at her and it’s gone.

/

Sitting in the police precinct with Jay across from him, Anderson pushes an envelope at her. Jay is sitting, tense, on the other side of the desk. 

“Look, Jay, I know this isn’t how we planned it,” he begins. 

Jay looks up sharply. “You’re damn right it isn’t! Fuck! Every mercenary, gang-banger and general scumbag criminal is going to know ... what am I going to do?” For a moment, she looks helpless and vulnerable, like a teenager caught drinking underage or crashing their parent’s car.

“I think,” Anderson breathes deeply, thinking how careful he has to be in this executing his next words. “I can help. What if, instead of just the cash, we could --”

“-- that wasn’t the deal. Do you have the money or not?” Jay’s attention is focused on him now.

“We have the money, Jay. We can get it to your accounts. We’ve already transferred fifty thousand,” Anderson soothes. “Just hear me out.” Jay crosses her arms, suspicious. Anderson takes a deep breath and pitches, “Look. You can take the money and walk away. But there’s a better option, Jay. You can do something with your life that matters --”

“Fuck me,” Jay rolls her eyes. “Do not give me a cliché sell on joining the Alliance. Not happening.”

“--  _ and  _ we can keep you safe, Jay.”

“I don’t want to spend my life taking orders from people who’ve been trained to think like spokes in a wheel. I’m too smart to waste my life like that,” she answers tactlessly. “Being safe is for cowards.”

“And how smart is it to throw yourself back out there, watching over your shoulder every second of every day, always wondering if the person next to you is connected to someone you had put away?”

She starts looking uncertain, but replies firmly, “I don’t want to be in the Alliance. Fuck. I  _ can’t _ , Anderson.”

“Then we can’t protect you.”

The words fall hard between them, clattering on the desk. 

“Obviously,” Jay replies coldly. “I got you what you want so you just throw me away.”

“You’re right, I am,” Anderson agrees. Jay looks surprised at this admission. “My hands are tied here, kid. My life is the military and if you won’t join up, there isn’t much I can do for you. And while you’re right, the military is mostly grunts who aren’t known for their sophisticated opinions and innovative spirit, there is a place for exceptional people. The N program, Jay, like me. Special Operations.”

“Right. Even if I did this, even if I agreed ... that’s bull shit. I’m sure every wide-eyed recruit joins thinking they’re going to be black ops.”

“Every recruit isn’t you, Jay.” No response to the flattery. 

Anderson tries a different approach. “Jay,  _ listen to me _ . A lot of people are going to be very pissed off when they realize who the traitor was. You blew your cover back there. The Reds have been crippled now but there’s gonna be some pretty bitter folks across the galaxy with nothing to lose. You can lie low on the run on your own, or you can get posted somewhere far away from here, chasing off slave raids, always moving, never in one place long enough for any hotheads to get their revenge. We can come up with a story for you; you were just an orphan on the streets running with small time gangs, enlisted as soon as you could for a better life. Something that won’t raise any suspicion.”

She pauses, considering. Bitterly, she says, “Okay. I’m listening. Keep making your case.”

“You can take supplementary exams in lieu of a proper education, and that’ll give you real credentials. You’ll have to sign on for a minimum of four years but you’ll get four years of real, paid salary that’ll do wonders for your credit score if you decide to leave after. You’ll be trained to use your biotics from some of the best in the galaxy, you’ll get to use weapons, you’ll get to be in a spaceship and spend time among the stars --”

“This is such bullshit,” she cuts him off. The anger is still bubbling but it’s different now; almost desperate and sad, like a furious animal backed into a corner. “I don’t need any of that shit. I can take care of myself.”

“Jay, I just want to give you four years to pull your life together and lie low. Okay? Four years, that’s all. You’re seventeen, kid, that means you can be out by the time you’re twenty-one. Still plenty of time to do something else with your life. And ... fuck, the others are worried.”

“About me?” Jay asks curiously.

“They’re worried about you’ll do, what you’re capable of.”

“Good, they should be.”

“That’s the problem!” He exclaims, collapsing back into his seat.

Anderson reaches into his desk and pulls out another datapad and he unlocks it. He doesn’t hand it to her but turns it in her direction so she can see.  “You’ll never learn to blend in with an attitude like that. They think you might be trouble. They don’t want to deal with another Wolf down the road. They want to deal with you now.” Her eyes widen as she takes in the documents he’s flipping through. Anderson adds unnecessarily, “So they’ve taken some ...  _ precautions _ .”

Her eyes darken deeply when she understands. She exclaims, “You’ve been building a  _ case  _ against me? You’re going to charge  _ me _ ?! I was helping  _ you _ !”

“It’s not my call. They don’t even want me telling you this; I just don’t know what to do. I want to help, Jay. I’m on your side. Enlisting might be the  _ only  _ way I can do that.”

“Right,” she replies sarcastically. “Really appreciate it. So basically, join the Alliance or else. You won’t even leave me to get chewed up by the vultures the Wolf left behind; you’d have me arrested and hand me to them.” Scowling, she looks away from him, thinking. “The Alliance is a real fucking piece of work, huh? What happened to honour and doing things by the book?”

“Don’t be a child about this,” Anderson replies coldly. “This is how things get done, even in the military. Maybe you’ll find you succeed here, after all.” Trying a more gentle tone, he adds, “Please -- let me do this for you, kid. Let’s prove to the assholes on the other side that you’re not just some arrogant, punk ass crime lord in the making. You enlist -- feign some enthusiasm for it, kid -- you bullshit your way through this. You walk the walk, you march, you do what it takes to get them off your case and convince them you’ve moved on. I know it’s not the bravest, most glamorous thing to do, but it’s smart.”

She freezes at his words. She studies him, assessing his answer. Finally: “Four years, right? And then I can leave? Any more surprise blackmail you care to let me know about?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Anderson says, shaking his head. “But I’ll keep an ear to the ground for you, kid. I’ll do what I can and let you know. I won’t let them fuck you over twice.”

She levels him with that same steady, powerful gaze from the time they met in the restaurant. “I really hope you’re telling the truth, Anderson.”

“But you’re in? We can get started on this goddamn paperwork?”

She nods, sullen and defeated.

“Perfect!” Anderson tries not to sound too enthusiastic but holy shit, this kid is something and if he can keep her interested, find ways to use her talents ... “You’re going to do incredible things, Jay, I’m sure. I mean,  _ more  _ incredible things.” She snorts in reply. He takes an envelope out from his desk and opens it up, pulling out forms. “Okay, I’ll help you fill this out. First things first, you’re gonna need a last name, kid.”

Jay shrugs. “Who cares? Pick anything.”

Anderson frowns and looks at the form. She had agreed, but she was going to be as recalcitrant as possible while doing so, it seemed. Tapping his pen on the desk, he thinks of something, her unofficial codename around the office during the case. He writes,

_ Jay Shepard. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:
> 
> “April Lady,” Heyer. “One may stand on the brink of a deep chasm of disaster, but one ..."  
> “The Illiad”, Homer. The reference to the Trojan Horse.  
> “Sherlock Holmes: The Science of Deduction”, Doyle. “I never guess, guessing is destructive to the logical faculties.”


	4. The Butcher

Sometimes Anderson thinks he’s got her all figured out. He tries to check in on her when he can, visit for a coffee when there’s time. She’s still the same in a lot of ways; projects the same lazy, easy authority that many officers would kill to possess. But there’s a difference too; she sits straighter in her chair, she doesn’t snap back as quickly, she’s learning on the whole to keep her mouth shut.

But he hears odd things about her. He checks in with her drill instructors during Basic, he follows up with her military career counsellors and her biotics tutors. Private Jay Shepard never does anything _wrong_ , they say. There’s nothing on record they can point towards and say, “She’s a bad egg. She’s trouble and I won’t have her.” She’s talented, resourceful and she learns quickly but mostly, they say, she keeps to herself. Reserved, antisocial, aloof. Some of the other recruits think she’s stuck-up; some of them are stupid enough to make trouble about it.

Like Private Cruz, the poor girl. “I don’t understand _how_ Cruz’s straps broke,” one of the Jump Masters confesses to Anderson in the privacy of her office, hours after Private Cruz’s funeral service. The Jump Master is red-eyed and wringing her cap through her hands, finally able to cry now that she’s out of the public eye. “They were _trained_ for their final jump. The equipment had been _checked_.”

Anderson remembers Jay’s comment about a Private Maria Cruz during one of their vid-calls. “She’s _such_ a little shit,” Jay had snarled, crossing her arms. “She’s jealous that I’m getting fast-tracked to Vanguard training and she’s not. She’s got a lot of fucking nerve, the way she talks to me. I think she’s planning something on me.”

“Why do you act like everyone is out to get you?” Anderson had sighed, exasperated as he rubbed his eyes. It had been an incredibly stupid thing to say, and Anderson had regretted it the minute it left his mouth.

“Because I wouldn’t fucking be here at all if they weren’t!” Jay had hissed back, slamming the hang up button on their call. Two steps forward, one step back.

Thinking back to that conversation, Anderson swears to himself he will never make light of Jay’s paranoia again.

But she’s more reluctant to share details with him now; he only gets the polite, scrubbed version of how things are going for her now. That’s how he ends up visiting a hospital on Luna after hearing about a group of soldiers that had jumped Shepard outside a bar. He's her emergency contact and still in hospital care; the assailants were checked in too, for some broken jaws and ribs.

He gets there, only to find out they boys died a few days ago.  _Fuck_.

He finds her room in the hospital; she seems to be sleeping. He grabs a metal chair and drags it across the floor, causing an ear-splitting shriek of metal on metal. Aside from a black eye, she seems unharmed. Her eyes remain closed.

“You want to tell me about those boys who jumped you?” Anderson says to her.

“Jumped me?” Jay’s eyes snap open and Anderson sees the fury there for a moment. She pushes herself -- he can see now that one arm is in a sling -- into a sitting position and looks at him imploringly, batting eyelashes. She struggles to muster a heroic salute; even after all these years, he has to remind himself that she is aspartame. “Sir! Major, I --”

“Cut that formal shit out, kid,” Anderson growls.

“Sir, I ... I didn’t know what to do ... I think someone slipped something in my drink,” she ignores him and continues in a vulnerable, shaky, eerily convincing voice. “I only had one soda” -- Anderson snorts -- “and I was so dizzy, I went outside for some fresh air and they ...” She swallows and averts her gaze.

“That didn’t work on me the first time we met,” he says coldly, resting his hands on the metal frame of the hospital bed. “It won’t work now.” Anderson leans down close so that he can talk in a whisper. He hisses, “You can _not_ just go around killing people who wrong you. This isn’t gangs anymore; we’re the fucking military. You’ve got to stop.”

Jay widens her eyes in surprise. “I didn’t ...” she insists, biting her lip for effect. “I just fought them off, sir! I can’t be held responsible for the hospital’s malpractice, I’m lucky _I_ didn’t suffer the same fate --”

“Don’t,” Anderson warns. “Don’t do that, I know --”

A cold smile cuts her face. There she is, Anderson thinks. “Prove it,” Jay replies coolly, the facade gone. She quirks an eyebrow at him and when he says nothing, she slides back into lying down, lithe like a cat. _Or a fox_. “I need my rest, David. I’m _barely_ recovering as it is, you know.” She doesn’t even bother hiding the rumble of laughter in her voice.

He can’t. She is too damn good at covering her tracks: he’s not sure if he’s bitter or relieved.

\

He understands that no matter how much she cooperates with him, she resents him only fractionally less than she resents all of the Alliance. The thought, while completely logical, fills Anderson with no small amount of sadness. He is not presumptuous enough to consider himself her father, but he does feel responsible for the girl, wretched thing that she could be.

So after her graduation from Officer Candidate school, Anderson makes a surprise visit and takes her out for lunch. He was proud of her at the ceremony; more proud of her than she probably was, anyways. But she saluted and marched on que, graciously accepted her first salute, shook all the right hands.

Over egg salad sandwiches on a cafe patio, Anderson asks, “So what’s the plan now, kid? Any top picks for postings?” If he can get her where she wants to be, he’ll try.

“Hadn’t really thought about it,” she replies listlessly, dipping a fry in mayonnaise. That’s a lie, of course, because by now Anderson knows Shepard’s always thought of everything.

“Uh-huh,” Anderson agrees, taking a bite of his sandwich. “What about a patrol route out in the colonies? Near the Skyllian Verge? You might even catch some heat against batarian thugs.”

Shepard looks up suddenly and Anderson mistakes this for interest. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a free for all. But hey, maybe you’ll get a chance to --”

“Knife a batarian in a bar?”

Anderson pauses. “What are you talking about?”

“I found some reports that said a couple of Alliance soldiers got in an ‘altercation’ with a batarian at an outpost. He got knifed -- I saw the pictures, it looked like he got knifed more than once.” Anderson isn’t sure what to say -- he hadn’t heard of this incident, but then again, reports of every bar brawl don’t make their way to a Major’s ear. Shepard continues, “Alliance soldiers got a smack on the wrist, suspended for a month, and then back to duty. Back on duty now, as a matter of fact.”

“What’s this about, Shepard?” Anderson suspects she wouldn’t have raised this for idle conversation. “Are you asking me if the brass turns a blind eye to shit that happens out there? Because --”

“He wasn’t even a slaver, or a merc,” Shepard continues, annoyed, looking at her food and not at Anderson.

“Okay, sure,” Anderson agrees, wondering where the hell this is going.

“He _wasn’t_ ,” Shepard snaps back. “The picture with the knife wound -- the tattoo on the batarians chest? That’s a line from _Rarok_ ’s treatise. It’s about why slavery is bad for batarians as a whole: it’s pretty much a landmark text for batarian progressive politics.” She scoffs, stuffs another fry in her mouth. She adds scornfully, “Not that you would know.”

Anderson blinks, surprised she can read batarian script, let alone catch the political nuances of the words. “So ...”

“So he was probably a resistance fighter, or at the least, a dissident of the Hegemony. The guy escapes batarian space and runs into a couple of Alliance thugs who decide to knife him. Real fucking friendly. Way to uphold galactic virtue.”

“You got batarian friends?” Anderson asks, starting to understand. It’s somehow very fitting that the first real display of empathy from Shepard is for probably the most hated species in the galaxy, next to the vorcha.

“Did,” she replies curtly. She eats the last of her meal in defiant silence.

Anderson resists the urge to sigh with impatience. Getting personal information out of her is like pulling teeth from a very snarky dragon. “What happened to them?”

“Him,” she corrects. Completely monotonously, she says, “Dead, probably. Executed.”

“Fuck.” There’s a fake breeze from the space station and it lifts up some of the flowers in the plants around them. Anderson sips his beer and thinks about what to say. Musing aloud, Anderson continues, “You know, most people don’t get that batarians are the number one victims of the Batarian Hegemony. We humans get fucked up by them once in awhile, and we certainly have the right to be mad, but the way that so-called government treats its own people ... those poor bastards. The unluckiest assholes in the galaxy. I’d rather be a sterilized krogan than a batarian living under that regime.”

Shepard surprises him with a small, sad, genuine smile. For once Anderson thinks he has said exactly the right thing with her; it’s like he can _feel_ a drawbridge being lowered an inch for him. He decides to take a chance: “This friend of yours -- he was important to you?”

She looks away, at the simulated sky, and says only, “Yeah.”

"How important?"

She gives him a hard glare and he knows he's hit a wall. She reaches for her cigarettes.

\

Shepard is furious, ignoring his messages and calls. Eventually, because he doesn’t know what else to do, he comes to find her where she’s been posted at Arcturus station. She’s renting a small condo -- modest, clean, comfortable -- a short walk from the base.

Before he can even say hello, she slams the door in his face. He sighs and knocks again. “Come on, kid. Let’s talk about this. I’ll stand here all night, you know I will.”

After a moment, the door swings back open with a biotic blast and Anderson walks in tentatively, carefully. “Jay?” he calls out. “Shepard?”

He hears rattling in the kitchen and edges over, peering around the corner. “I know why you’re upset, but it was for the best --”

“Fuck. You.” She spits every word out acerbically, drinking straight from the bottle of a cheap Mindoir tequila. “ _Sir_ ,” she adds unceremoniously.

“Don’t do that, don’t _sir_ me,” Anderson chastises, settling on a bright red bar stool in front of the kitchen counter. “I want to talk to you about this; tell me what’s going on. Why were you even visiting him at all?”

The records hadn’t been obvious at first, while Anderson kept track of the Wolf’s prison reports. A university student studying criminal psychology, bachelor’s degree, female; a journalist interviewing former crime lords about the justice system, early-career, female. It wasn’t until Anderson asked Jong to start keeping tabs on video surveillance, not just written reports, that he realized the identity of all these young female visitors.

“What does it matter?” She leans against the windowsill, taking another swig. “He’s allowed to have visitors. It’s a part of his rights as an inmate. You can’t take that from him.”

“I didn’t,” Anderson argues calmly. “I’m only blocking you from visiting him.”

The bottle misses him -- she wasn’t really aiming for him, he knows -- and cracks against the wall. The smell of fermented fruit fills the air as the alcohol seeps across the floor.

“Fuck off!” Shepard looks genuinely upset now, cheeks reddening. “Why take this from me? I’ve done everything you’ve asked; I’ve played by the books, I’ve been a good soldier, kept my head down, spotless record -- why can’t I have this one fucking thing?”

“Why do you want it so bad?” Anderson asks, staring at her intently, still not moving from his spot on the bar stool.

“Why do you _care_?!” she exclaims in exasperation.

“Because it’s fucked up!” Anderson replies harshly. More gently, he continues, “It is fucked up, Jay. I don’t know if you’ll ever come to terms with what he did, but I’m not going to let you keep putting yourself in range of his emotional manipulations. You need to fucking move on.”

“You can’t just decide that,” Jay says through gritted teeth. “You’re not my guardian, or my CO, or anything to me at all. You’re just some asshole who can’t mind his own fucking business.”

“I’m your friend, Jay,” Anderson replies firmly. “Whether you like it or not. I’m putting my foot down on this; no more visits with the Wolf. He has a hold on you that we have to break -- if you won’t do it, I will.”

She scowls and breathes deeply, marching away from the windowsill and into the living room. Anderson sucks it up and follows her into the living room, collapsing on an armchair. There is only sullen silence that Shepard has committed to upholding. After a while, when she still hasn’t kicked him out, he decides to take a chance and inquires, “You had dinner yet?”

She casts him a withering glare. “No.”

“How about I order us a pizza?”

“Are you trying to insult me?” she seethes, dark eyes flashing. “ _No_ , Anderson. I don’t want your fucking food as bribery to get into my life.”

“Come on, I’ll _make_ a pizza from scratch, Shepard. You have never seen a man knead dough like I can.” She scoffs a single _ha_ , looking less hostile, until she shrugs her shoulders in vague agreement. Anderson grins, getting to his feet. He holds out a hand for her to grab and get off the couch while suggesting, “Perfect. The farmer’s market is open for another hour for the fresh stuff.” She does not take his hand, giving him a studious gaze from the couch.

“Then go get what you need,” she orders, tilting her head to the door. He quirks an eyebrow; she rolls her eyes and adds: “I’ll still be here. Now go! Get thee gone, seriously.”

He returns an hour later and she seems to be in a suspiciously better mood. They’re prepping in the kitchen, making idle conversation, laughing, when he feels a hand on the small of his back. He turns around sharply -- dropping the sharp knife, though. She rests her hands on either side of him on the counter, leaning in and cocking her head to the side. “So I’ve been thinking,” she begins coquettishly.

Anderson tries to back up but he’s already against the counter, confused and startled. She brings either hand to the sides of his waistband, dragging her fingers along to meet in the middle, at his fly, where she starts fiddling with the button of his jeans. Anderson grabs her wrists and pulls her off of him. “Knock it off, Jay. What the hell is going on?”

She’s flushed, although he’s not sure if it’s because she’s excited or angry. Probably both (probably doesn’t even know the difference). “I know what this is about,” she smiles condescendingly and it’s somehow worse than having bottles thrown at him. “You’re mad because I don’t pay enough attention to you.” She tries to to wring one hand loose from his grip but he tightens it, holding his breath. He feels like he’s been pinned by a lion: no sudden movements, he thinks. Careful now.

“Shepard,” he tries to sound reassuring, not angry or repulsed. “You’ve misunderstood my intentions, you hear? I’m your superior officer, and I’ve got at least twenty years on you. This is not okay.”

“So? It doesn’t bother me,” she shrugs, pushing her pelvis into his and he reacts on instinct, shoving her away from him. Blood rushes through him, and in great betrayal of his rational mind, throbs around his nether regions. He slides sideways along the counter, sitting on a dining room chair to put space between them. This is not how he envisioned the night going.

“Jay, we _cannot_ do this, I don’t --”

“Relax! I won’t tell,” she reassures, still nonplussed, running a hand through her hair. She saunters over to him, circling him, a smirk growing. “Let me make you comfortable, okay?” She drops to her knees in front of him, pushing his legs apart. He snaps them shut and pushes his chair back away from her.

“Stop!” he shouts, flustered. He has no desire for her, he has never even considered her, but _fuck_ it’s been a long time since he’s been laid and she’s definitely easy on the eyes but _fuck_ he doesn’t want to _start_ thinking of her like that. For fuck’s sake. “It’s more than that, Jay. I’m responsible for you -- I got you into this mess, I’m trying to look out for you. It would be a hundred different kinds of wrong to take advantage of that.”

“So what? I know you’re attracted to me,” she accuses, standing back up, more annoyed now. “I knew it from the minute you met me. Why don’t you just admit what you want? We can arrange for everyone to be happy.”

“Listen to me,” he says slowly. “This is not working. All you are doing is proving to me why I need to keep you away from him.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she demands, more visibly annoyed. They’ve never really talked about the extent of what the Wolf might have made her do. Sometimes Anderson thinks anything in his dark imagination is probably worse than reality; then he thinks, maybe reality is worse than anything he’s imagined.

“You don’t think anyone gives a shit about you,” he lobs at her. “You think everyone wants something from you, and that’s the only reason they’d ever do anything for you. But you’re wrong.” She doesn’t reply, face tightening in defensiveness. Anderson closes his eyes, exhaling. “Jesus, kid. What’d he do to you?”

“Watch yourself, David,” she threatens, any last traces of seduction gone. Her face is flushed now and he’s sure it’s anger this time. “Don’t run your mouth about shit you don’t understand.”

“I’m not judging,” he appeases, holding his hands up. “Kid, look, what he did ...”

“That’s not why --” she cuts in, louder.

“-- that’s not your fault. Nothing he did is your fault --” Anderson continues over, also escalating in volume.

“I just want to tell him --”

“I know you’re angry at him but --”

“ _I miss him_ !” The confession rips out of her lips and as soon as she’s said it, she looks absolutely terrified. More quietly, she spits out, “I just fucking miss him. I am ... I am such an _idiot_... I ...” Her eyes shine brightly and she moves forward, shoving past him to her balcony door, humiliated.

His heart sinks. Of course it’s a natural response, of course she misses him. He should have seen this coming but it still stuns and horrifies him. He’s opened the wounds, he thinks. He ought to have the decency to at least try stitching them back up, even if that means she might throw him over the balcony. He gets up from the chair and follows her out the balcony doors.

When he steps outside, she’s standing with her back to him, leaning on the railing.

With a start, he realizes that her shoulders are shaking: she’s _crying_ . He steps closer; she doesn't turn around. It’s quiet and subdued with the distinct practice of someone who’s worked very hard to never cry in front of anyone, and now his heart is sunk _and_ breaking. She wipes her eyes with her sweater sleeve and tries to force the tears to stop, but that only brings them on harder than before.

David forces himself to keep his breathing steady while he watches her, wiping his own eyes on the back of his hand. Her attachment to the Wolf is terrifying and sickening but Anderson isn’t a therapist or a psychologist -- damn, he isn’t even a parent.

“Hey,” he calls softly. She doesn’t reply. He does the only thing he can think of: he puts a hand on either shoulder and turns her around, bringing her into an embrace. Although she struggles a bit at first, she collapses into his arms, curled up, crying and hiding, her shame palpable. Anderson can’t bring himself to tell her it’s okay, that everything’s going to be fine, because the truth is that he has no fucking clue. So he murmurs the only true thing he can think of while smoothing her hair: “I’m right here. I got you.”

\

More often, now there are days like this: where he comes back to his apartment and she’s sitting on his couch, lounging casual as she pleased, a coffee on the table and book in hand.

“How did you -- this is a _private_ residence, kid. How do you even know where I live? And how did you --”

Shepard holds up a hand without looking up. “One, anyone can be found. Two, there’s no such thing as secure. Get over it.”

“It’s the _holidays_ , Lieutenant Shepard,” Anderson intones dryly, pulling a bottle of wine from the rack while searching for glasses. “You really want to be _here_?”

“Obviously,” Shepard pelts the words at him like hail. “I’m here, aren’t I? Do you doubt my ability to be where I want?” Anderson hands her a glass of wine, accepting defeat and rolling his eyes.

“And here Commander Chang said you were doing well,” Anderson sighs, more to himself than her. “He said you were getting along with others, going out with the group ...”

Shepard shrugs, looking aloof. “Guess so. They’re not all bad. They amuse me.”

Anderson snorts and sits down on the couch, grabbing the remote. “Amusing you is what toys do, not friends. Shouldn’t you be hanging out with your friends while on leave?”

Shepard narrows her eyes at him, not touching the wine. “I thought that’s what I was doing.” She’s glaring but she looks a little nervous too, like she’s honestly concerned he’ll reject her and kick her out.

Anderson sighs and gestures for her to drink. “Well, then I hope you like Elcor Shakespeare, because I’m paying a premium to stream it live tonight and don’t intend to miss it.”

She smirks and leans over to pick up her glass. “Go for it!" She pivots and stretches her legs out on the couch, adjusting a pillow behind her. "But I might have to drink myself out of five of my senses.”

\

“How is she doing?” Hackett asks finally.

Anderson raises an eyebrow; he didn’t think the admiral remembered Shepard. It’d been almost four years since they’d signed her on; she’d spent most of it in training, taking every course she could get her hands on. “Good,” he lies. He doesn’t mention the incidents or the rumours or the fact that the other soldiers give her a wide berth. Besides, he’s sure Hackett has seen the reports for himself. If he doesn't bring it up, neither will Anderson.

“Her contract’s coming up,” Hackett observes. “You think she’ll volunteer to extend?”

“Doubtful,” Anderson sighs, suspecting where this is going.

“But we can remind her that it’s in her best interests,” Hackett offers.

“I’m not doing that again,” Anderson says sharply. “You can’t ask me to blackmail that kid again.”

“Help, David,” Hackett smooths over. “We’re helping her, she just doesn’t know it.”

“Sure, just a regular fucking invisible hand, we are,” Anderson replies bitterly.

“You won’t have to do anything but talk to her,” Hackett affirms. “The rest is handled. She’ll probably come to you.” Anderson doesn’t ask, just pulls out a strong scotch once Hackett has left. Hackett hadn’t gone from rags to dog tags without a shrewd mind and a certain calculated ruthlessness, Anderson reminds himself. It comforts him a bit to think that if Shepard met Hackett, she’d approve.

When Anderson finally approaches her with the offer of N-school, he isn’t too surprised when she accepts. Just three weeks before, there’d been an incident involving a Shepard, a drive-by shooting and a whole lot of covering up on the part of the Alliance. A random act of violence, it was pegged. Anti-military extremists, was what the journalists deduced. Thankfully, no one noticed that the guys behind the wheel and the turret had aimed only for Shepard in a crowd of Alliance officers.

Four years later and she still can’t escape it. People are still mad and hungry for news about the snitch’s existence. Hiding on the Villa for a year makes sense, when Anderson sells it to her like that. She’ll come out trained as the best of the best, she’ll be able to handle herself anywhere in the galaxy, when she finally leaves.

She nods, defeated again, but there’s less anger this time. Mostly it’s just weary resignation; she thanks him for breakfast, puts her military-issue cap on, and leaves the diner without looking back.

\

Anderson isn’t worried she won’t succeed. She’s gotten through the Villa, through the Academy, and her N7 designation is just a matter of formality, in his opinion. She almost seemed to enjoy her climb through the N ranks. Now, it’s a fly-in, fly-out rescue of some Alliance soldiers taken for slavery on Torfan. Dangerous, certainly. Difficult: no question. But nothing she couldn’t handle, if Shepard was methodical, quiet and smart about it (everyone agrees she is, even -- _especially --_ the ones that are scared of her).

No one expected a bloodbath.

She’s sitting in his office on the _SSV Warsaw_ , her squad having been rescued by Anderson’s ship after setting Torfan aflame. The remainder of her squad, anyways. Still in her armour, splattered with blood, soot and dirt, her helmet in her lap, she waits for him to start speaking. He’s pacing the room, feeling her cold eyes trace every step he takes. She has shown no reaction so far; no guilt, no relief, not even the crazed rage that Anderson assumes must have consumed her when she began her slaughter.

“They’re saying you executed _everyone,_ ” Anderson finally says, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He’s facing away from her, looking at the steel bolted wall of his ship. “ _Everyone_ , Shepard. Even the ones that surrendered.”

“They were just bluffing,” Shepard shrugs -- he can hear the rustle of her armour. “The batarians would never have handed over Torfan. And even if they weren’t ...” She scoffs to herself. “After that shit show of a landing thanks to Major Fuck-up Kyle, we didn’t have the people to guard prisoners. I couldn’t spare anyone.”

“How exactly did Major Kyle end up incapacitated, huh? The soldiers with you said he survived the landing and it wasn’t till _after_ the two of you went ahead to scout that he was knocked out.”

“Things got hairy,” she says, almost sarcastically employing cliche military language. “We went to go look for survivors and ran into some unfriendlies. He took a shot to the head for me; I owe him my life.” The attempt at sincerity is almost worse than the sarcasm.

“Shepard!” Anderson turns around sharply, anger building. “Shepard! This is fucking serious --”

“I know that,” she agrees, perfectly reasonable. More bitterly, she adds, “I don’t know why I’m the one getting the flack for this shit. We lost almost a quarter our people when we crawled out of the ship, and that wasn’t my fault.”

“Right, you only lost the other fifty-percent of your team,” Anderson says dryly, collapsing into his chair on the other side of his desk.

“They got lost in the labyrinths,” Shepard replies, calm again. “We got split up underground -- we’re lucky my squad made it out at all. You could die down there.”

“People will die down there, Shepard!” Anderson exclaims. “Of the seventy-five percent casualties, we’ve got twenty-five percent dead or spaced from the landing, forty-percent confirmed dead from the fighting at the base and _ten percent_ missing. Fuck, Shepard. Ten percent of our people could just be stuck, buried in those catacombs under the Torfan base, wandering around until they starve to death? What kind of fucking way to die is that?”

“Maybe they’ll go crazy and kill each other first,” she replies, only the smallest hint of a sneer in her voice. “Let’s not rule out that honourable end.”

“Wha -- you’re insane, Shepard!”

“Ha!” She scoffs, leaning over to rest her elbows on his desk. Her eyes glint with anger, not humor, when she taunts, “Insane? Please, mad men know nothing. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded.”

“Don’t you _fucking_ joke about ...” Anderson can barely speak, he’s never been so horrified and angry with this evil kid. He can’t descend to her level, he tells himself. He clenches his fists and spits, “It better have been fucking worth it. You’re never going to be able put this behind you, you understand?”

“Of course it was worth it,” she says. Her jaw tightens but her tone remains neutral.

“I know you’re angry about the attack on Elysium -- we all were, but ... this ... the batarians will --”

“I didn’t do it for _Elysium_ ,” she snaps, sounding angry for the first time. Anderson stops, his curiosity taking hold. “Do you honestly think I’m some patriotic fool? Some jingoist asshole?”

“Then what, kid? What made it worth it?”

“I did it because it was the _only_ thing to do. If you want to damage the slave economy, you have to make it less viable for the batarians. How do you do that? By destroying their biggest enabler for the trade. You know that Torfan represents the biggest portion of slavery -- more than a third?”

“What is this, a fucking political science class?”

“Don’t be an idiot, David!” Shepard is angry now, her cheeks flushed. “You know that we can’t just keep chasing off raiders and rescuing slaves from pirate ships here and there. You know that isn’t working! You want to end this shit? You _end it._ The price of slaves is going to go _way_ up now that their supply is cut off, meaning there will be less slaves, there are way less mercs to protect the industry -- the batarian people are going to be able to start demanding better pay, because their leaders are going to need them to take the place of labourers. This is basic fucking capitalist economics, asshole. I _helped_ the batarians, the would-be slaves, and all of Council fucking Space.” She breathes out, her tirade over, and glares at him.

“And you figured that all out by yourself. _Fuck,_ ” Anderson curses. She isn’t wrong, he knows that, but _still_... “Damn. You could have shared that with us. You didn’t have to go all Sun Tzu on us, keeping your plans impenetrable.”

Shepard’s corner of her mouth twitches a bit, like she’s suppressing a pleased smile. “I did fall on those bastards like a thunderbolt, you have to admit.”

Anderson sighs, burying his face in his hands. She is right, he knows she’s right, but it’s fucking awful to think of what she’s willing to sacrifice for it. “Why’d you do it? You ...” He decides to just say it. If nothing else, Shepard appreciates bluntness. “You _don’t_ care about the galaxy, or anyone, but yourself, Shepard. You have never tried to hide that. Why’d you decide to do it?”

She holds his gaze, eyes softening just a touch -- it’s real, this time, not a ploy. He’s known her for enough years to recognize this fact. “It _had_ to be me,” she replies finally, speaking softly now.

The thought hits him hard, and he’s not sure why he didn’t think of it before. Maybe it’s because she’s been in an Alliance uniform for almost a decade, maybe it’s because he’d actually started to really like the kid, really felt like they might actually be something close to friends, that’d he’d convinced himself to forget about where she’d really come from.

He takes a deep breath and brings his hands down. “What’d you do, Jay?” He raps his fingers on his desk, focusing on his hand instead of looking at her. “You wanna tell me what you did on Torfan?” He can tell that she understands; he’s not talking about the last twenty-four hours.

“Just ... had to be me. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, David.”

“You really ...” Of course her squad was the only squad to navigate the labyrinths successfully; of course she’d probably spent years contemplating the strategic importance of Torfan. Of course, too, she’d probably known the mission was cursed from the start. “You really believe this was the only way to do it?”

She nods with uncharacteristic solemness.

“Then I believe you, kid.” He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a half-empty bottle of scotch he’d picked up last time he was on Earth, and two glasses. “I got your back, Shepard. And believe me,” Anderson says while he fills both glasses. Shepard leans forward and wraps her hand around one. “You’re gonna need as much brass behind your back as possible when this shit hits the news. Maybe we can get Hackett or Udina to vouch for you.”

Shepard smiles -- a rare, real smile, that doesn’t make her look mean or menacing. She picks up her glass and offers, “To getting shit done.”

Anderson picks up his glass, “To self-sacrifice.”

Shepard scowls and pulls her drink back without chinking her glass. “It’s the self, ” she says coldly, “That cannot and must not be sacrificed, David. Anyone who thinks otherwise has been deluded by people smarter than themselves.”

“You made a hell of a lot of sacrifices, today, Shepard,” he counters, skipping the toast and tipping his glass back.

“Yes,” she agrees. “But not me. I’m still here.” She gives a wide, piercing smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

David nods, swishing the burning liquid around his tongue, letting it sting on the sides of his mouth. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s so, so glad that she’s right and he’s so grateful that she is, in fact, still here, still alive and kicking him in the proverbial nuts with her callous self-interest and relentless wit.

When the Council approaches him about her potential Spectre-ship, he’ll think of this moment. ( _Do whatever it takes? Yes, Councillor, I think she will._ ). He’ll think about this, too, when he offers her the position of his XO on the Normandy ( _Earning your crew’s trust is a way to protect yourself, too, Commander.)._

He’ll think of it most of all, when he’s standing over her empty casket, years later. The self must not be sacrificed, he thinks, weary. _But here you are, kid_. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks away, so heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References:
> 
> “Merry Wives of Windsor,” Shakespeare. “Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five senses.”  
> “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe. “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work! ”  
> “The Art of War,” Tzu. “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”  
> “The Fountainhead,” Rand. “Self-sacrifice? It is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”


End file.
